Neurological Conditions
by CyndarDragon
Summary: When Dib is assaulted by an onslaught of horrific seizures, he is surprised that the only creature who can truly bring him comfort is his own worst enemy, Zim. When Dib becomes paralyzed on his right side and half blind, Zim must choose between two things; leave the disabled human to rot, or help him. ZADR - lemon in chapter 21.
1. Issues

**Wow, I haven't started a new FanFiction since my Silent Hill craze :O Anyways, here's my first Invader Zim fanfic. I hope it won't make your eyeballs bleed out of your skull :3**

It began hardly a month ago while he was trying to fall asleep in his bed. At first he wasn't aware of what was going on. It was like he had blacked out and woke up feeling as if his body had been hit by a train. He thought that he had fallen asleep in some highly unpleasant position and woke up feeling terribly sore and achy in the middle of the night, unaware of what it truly was until he went to school a few days later.

He had been in the bathroom alone when it happened again. A slight headache throbbed in his skull and a tingling sensation formed in his fingers and toes before it occurred, then he could have sworn that he had blinked and was laying on the ground of the disgusting toilet stall. He was breathing heavily but didn't know why. His head had hit something when he fell and he must have bitten his tongue since a gentle stream of blood was slowly trickling out of his mouth. When he tried to move, he felt a terrible pressure in his head and an unusual sense of general sickness and discomfort. When he staggered over to the mirror, he saw that he had been scraped in multiple places and bruises were forming. How long had he been out?

A feeling of dread settled in his stomach as he cleaned himself of the blood and slowly walked back to class. He was expecting all sorts of strange things from his body nowadays. The entrance of puberty had caused him to grow and thin out to the point where he could clearly see his ribs beneath the surface of his skin. Hormones were a strange thing and he knew that it would cause bizarre things to happen as he grew and matured, but this? This wasn't normal. Twice now it's happened and he wasn't sure what it even was.

Of course, stepping into class didn't help.

He still looked disheveled and Zim—that arrogant, stubborn, stupid little alien—wasted no time in commenting on it. There was a smirk upon his face, an incessantly irritating little curve of the lips in the right hand corner. "Did the toilet beat you up, Dib-human?"

Dib glared at the alien, then glanced at the clock. Nearly half an hour had gone by. Something was wrong with his body…something terribly, terribly wrong.

His legs were wobbly as he made his way over to his desk, his skinny body not wanting to carry his weight anymore as he sat down on his chair with more effort than it usually took. He felt tired, weak. The teacher scolded him for being gone for so long, but he was too busy looking at his hands. The palms were sweaty and he had the urge to puke.

His eyes moved to Zim. The whole class was quiet as they listened to Ms. Bitters' angry speech directed towards the scythe-haired boy, but he wasn't paying attention. He stared at Zim intently, his gaze piercing and angry. "What did you do to me?" he growled.

Zim looked back at him from he was with his thin legs upon the desk, reclined in a lazy fashion as he balanced a pencil on his lip out of boredom. "What?"

"You did something to me! I don't know what, but you did!" Dib accused, pointing a shaky finger at the alien. Ms. Bitters went quiet right about then, surprised by his sudden outburst.

Zim narrowed his eyes at him. "What are you talking about? I haven't touched you."

"Shut up! I know you did something!" Dib yelled, slamming his palms against the desk as he suddenly stood.

Zim scowled like how he usually did when he was falsely accused. "I didn't do anything to you, human stench!"

"Something's been happening to me and I know it's your fault! WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!"

"YOU LIE!" Zim roared back, appearing legitimately angered.

"Shut up, the both of you!" Ms. Bitters thundered, her lanky figure standing behind her desk.

Dib looked at her with his eyes, still breathing with effort.

"If you two have a problem with each other, work it out after class. The rest of you, get out your textbooks and open to page two-hundred and fifty-three," the frightening teacher said.

Dib glared at Zim one last time, but the two said nothing more until the bell rang to signify their release for the rest of the day.

Dib took extra time packing his bag, purposely taking longer to increase the distance between himself and Zim. The alien was the first to leave the room, so he felt relatively safe in not encountering him for the rest of the day.

Instead, Zim was waiting right outside the classroom. The human nearly walked straight into him.

The thin alien was wearing an interested and contemplative look on his face. He was even thinner than Dib himself was and significantly curvier. His thighs never touched when he was standing or walking, and his purplish-pink, well-conforming shirt only made him seem even more feminine.

"Alright, Dib-human," he began. "What's been happening to you that caused you to accuse Zim of something he didn't do? If anyone's going to bring you pain, it should be _me_, not some imposter."

Dib sneered at him. "Leave it to you to say that," he said as he shoved past the green alien, intent on heading home.

"Don't ignore the Zim!" Zim said as he quickly walked after the human. "What madness is this?! Something bothering you, and you can't tell you future slave master what it is?!"

"I just feel sick, okay?" Dib replied. "Ill, you know what that is? Something's wrong with me, and I'm pretty certain _you've_ done something to cause it."

Zim furrowed his brow. "But I haven't touched you."

Dib stormed out of the front of the school, his black trench coat flowing in the wind. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned down the street, but Zim was still following him. "Well? Don't you have to go take over the world or something?" he muttered. "Now's good timing considering I'm too worried over my own physical safety."

"Get on with you," Zim said. "I want to see what this 'sickness' is. Does it involve projectile vomiting?"

Dib sighed. "No," he said. "I black out and feel like a truck hit me."

Zim only looked confused. "Humans and their inferior illnesses…"

"Go away, Zim," Dib said with less enthusiasm than usual. He held his head down low as he walked. "I just want to be left alone."

Zim stopped walking, looking insulted by the demand. "Pitiful human," he said, turning around and heading towards his own house.

Once inside, Dib looked around the cold home. His father was gone—as usual—and Gaz had beaten him home, playing her video games in the living room and ignoring her homework. She didn't even acknowledge his existence as he went up the stairs and into his room.

He set up one of his multiple cameras and had it facing his bed. He hit the record button and laid down, figuring that if it happened again, he'd at least be able to see what was happening to him in the span of time that he kept blacking out. He laid down, hoping it wasn't anything serious.

Hours passed until it happened again for no distinctive reason. He was very aware of his physical sensations before it started. Tingling in the fingers and toes, slight shaking in his arms and legs, and then he blacked out, only to wake up gasping and wheezing with a bleeding mouth. He moaned in pain, rolling over onto his side. He laid there for a second, breathing slowly as he stared at the camera. He needed to get up and see it. He needed to know what had happened to him, but he couldn't get out of the bed. His muscles felt so incredibly weakened.

Feeling defeated, he waited in his bed, laying helplessly upon the mattress.


	2. Lies or Truth?

That blasted human! What was wrong with him? He acted stranger than usual throughout the entire day. He was almost mopey to an extent. Zim wouldn't admit it, but he was worried when the human was in the bathroom for so long. After all, Dib was, quite literally, the only thing that gave his entire mission a meaning.

Lost amongst a species he had little knowledge of and the physical embodiment of a stranger in a strange land, he was completely, utterly alone on this hunk of mud and dirt. He knew he was an outcast here. He always had been. School children generally avoided him (except for Keef, but he needed distance from that annoying little mud nugget and therefore ignored him).

However, he had been observing them. He had seen the camaraderies that many of the junior high children had developed. Once in a while he saw two individuals pressing their lips together and wrapping their arms around each other, which at first disgusted him beyond comprehension. The exchange of bodily fluids in the mouth? Purposely putting another person's saliva on your lips? Disgusting, vile! Blasphemous! Gross!

But something in him yearned for something not very similar to kissing or hugging, but simply for a relationship. A friend. If two people kissed one another, it showed that they trusted the other enough for physical contact. The only creature on this vile planet that didn't totally ignore him was, ironically, his own worst enemy.

Dib knew he was there in the world and acknowledged it. Dib not only interacted with him, but he _wanted_ to. That in and of itself was something special and gave Zim a reason to continue doing his work, though lately, he had begun questioning whether or not this planet really was worth taking over. If Earth was his, then good, but what would he get out of it? A few slaves, land, and water, the latter of which was mostly salt and burned his skin if there were pollutants present in it. What use was that to him if he was the only Irken on the planet?

He accepted the fact that he was alone and had become accustomed to it for the past year that he had been on Earth, but the only source of comfort he had was the incessant quarrelling with the black-haired maniac who sat on the other side of his classroom. In a way, he even enjoyed fighting with him. The socializations got him excited to express his anger and dislike of humanity, and sometimes even got him closer to Dib, the only human who cared about him. It wasn't a loving care, but Dib knew Zim was there, alive, breathing, and watching to ensure he didn't go through his plan of dominating the world—not that he actually had any. And now something was wrong with the Dib-human.

And he didn't do it.

Zim entered his base and closed the door behind him. He took his black wig off as well as the lenses, exposing his antennae and his red, gem-like eyes. If Dib was sick, that meant he was in danger of dying. Oh, Irk! If Dib died, what would he do?! Sure, they weren't friends, but nobody else cared about Zim, and nobody else interacted with him in the ways that Dib did. Nobody would try to stop him. Dominating the world would be a simple piece of cake, far too easy for him. There'd be no challenge, no one to fight him, no excitement. No fun.

Most of all, he wouldn't want the world anymore if there was no resentment. Other than being dissected alive, the last thing he wanted was his own comfort source to disappear. He didn't want Dib dying.

"Troublesome human…" he said as he put the wig and lenses back on, then he left the house and headed for Dib's house.

* * *

Dib stared at the camera as he replayed the footage over and over again. There, right when he started getting those tingling sensations, was when his eyes rolled up to the back of his head. He was convulsing on the bed, muscles tensed and limbs moving as if he was being electrified. The footage showed him writhing around, body moving violently and erratically. His diaphragm had stopped working halfway through the seizure and he had stopped breathing. After nearly two minutes of almost no air, his body had realized it was being starved of oxygen, and Dib took in a loud, painful-sounding gasp of air. His body curled in on itself, shaking, trembling awfully, arms bent in positions that they weren't meant to go in.

Dib stared at the image of himself as he tried lifting his head, still convulsing rhythmically. Apparently he had realized that he was in trouble halfway through the seizure, though he couldn't remember a single aspect of it. He saw his mouth open, bleeding profusely from his bitten tongue, and he tried to call for his father. Nothing came out but a bloodied gurgle, then his body curled up again tightly into the fetal position.

Then, suddenly, it stopped. His body breathed steadily yet quickly, unmoving as it recovered. It was ten minutes later did he start to realize again that something was wrong and he squirmed on his bed.

The part when he saw himself stare into the camera, right back at him, disturbed him just as much as the rest of his ordeal. He turned the camera off and sat on his bed thinking. Were these really seizures? What had happened to cause them? Had he hit his head on something? Zim was pretty convincing when he said it wasn't him, then it struck him that the alien would always gloat about whatever harm he caused him. Zim never hid anything he did to Dib. He _always_ told him. Always. Now, for once, Zim was telling him that he didn't do anything to him, and he was in serious trouble.

He got up and was about to head downstairs to show his father the footage until he heard loud knocking on his bedroom window. He jumped and looked startled until he saw that it was Zim, clinging to the side of the house with the sharp claws on his mechanical spider legs. He looked less than pleased and had an annoyed expression. "Open the window, worm baby!"

Dib hesitated and watched him in confusion. He limped over to the window above his bed and opened it, making him feel as if he was out of his mind for letting his mortal enemy enter his home. "What do you want?"

"To know what's wrong with you," Zim said as he crawled into the bedroom, his spider legs quickly moving him inside. He set his feet on the floor and retracted the legs. "You accuse Zim of doing something he didn't do! You lie!"

Dib glanced at the camera for a second. "No, I know you didn't do it now."

Zim blinked. "Really? Oh, good, that was easy. Now tell Zim; have you figured out what's wrong?"

Dib glared at the alien. "Why do you care all of a sudden?"

"Tell me!"

Dib picked up the camera again. "I've been having seizures," he said in a sullen tone.

Zim just stared at him. "Are those bad?"

"Yes, Zim, they're bad, they're very bad!" Dib said, irritated. "It's my brain sending out too many electrical impulses all at once! Of course it's bad!"

"Will it kill you?"

Dib growled. "I don't know…it could," he said. "How am I supposed to know?"

"You don't know? The Dib doesn't know something? LIES! You know everything! You're the only other intelligent being amongst this sea of little worm maggots that crawl around on this disgusting planet!"

Dib stared at him. "Did you just compliment me?"

"LIES!" he yelled again. "So how do we fix this seizure problem?"

"As if you care," he said, heading towards his door. Zim immediately noticed the limp in Dib's walk.

Knowing that it was going to be hard to get his attention considering he was leaving with a determined look on his face, he replied, "As a matter of fact, I do."

Dib looked back at him. "You're kidding, right?"

Zim crossed his arms, looking like his façade of being strong was faltering. "I don't hate everything about you, Dib. If you need help, just say so."

"I don't think you can help me much. I'm going to show this to my dad," he said, waving the camera in front of him. "And then I'm going to a doctor. A neurologist. You know, someone who studies brains. Maybe they can figure out why this is happening, I'll go on medication, maybe need a surgery or two if it's serious, and then I'll be back to normal."

"Pathetic human, I know what neurology is!" Zim retorted. "Irken technology is far superior to whatever you humans have. Humans have to cut their own bodies open to fix something, Irkens don't."

"I'm not an Irken, I'm a human. For all I know, your 'technology' could snap my head right off my shoulders."

Zim looked legitimately disturbed by that idea, and it clearly showed on his face. "Fine, go show it to your father. If—" he stopped midsentence when he heard someone walking up the stairs.

Dib panicked. He grabbed onto Zim's thin frame by his sides and roughly shoved him into his closet, quickly closing the doors. "Dib-human! Release me!" the alien yelled, but Dib quietly shushed him.

Professor Membrane appeared in the doorway mere moments later. "Son? I heard angry noises up here. Are you alright?"

Zim could hear Dib sighing. He moved a little bit in the closet to get himself more comfortable, realizing that he had fallen onto a pile of dirty laundry. How revolting.

"I'm…not really alright, actually," Dib confessed.

Professor Membrane gently herded his son over to his bed. "Go on Son, you can tell me anything and you know it," he proclaimed proudly.

Dib fidgeted with his camera. He felt strange for more than one reason, the first one being that there was an alien hiding in his closet. The second was that he wasn't sure how to tell his father of the seizure incidents, so he simply rewound the footage to the camera. "I think there's something wrong with me," he said as he waited for the camera.

His father looked at him and said, "I've been meaning to have this talk with you for a long time, Son."

Dib furrowed his brow. "About what?"

"I just never wanted to offend you," the tall figure said. "I've always been concerned for your psychology, Son."

"My…psychology?"

The professor's voice changed to a far more gentle one. It sounded so unusual from his normally loud, confident tone. "I know it was hard on you when Mom died," he said.

Dib blinked, not expecting such a subject to be brought up. "I was eight when that happened. It was a long time ago."

"Yes, but I've always been afraid that the psychological impacts have scarred you," he said. The professor removed his goggles and opened up his lab coat a little, revealing his face to his child.

Dib hadn't seen his father's face in so long without the goggles or the coat, it almost looked foreign to him.

The professor continued. "I know that you've always loved the paranormal, ever since you were very young, but I also know that it became your obsession after Mom passed away. It's been your obsession ever since. I hear you talk to yourself and I'm well aware of the fact that you don't socialize with other kids your age very well."

"What are you getting at?" Dib asked.

"What I want to tell you is that I've been wanting to bring you to a doctor," the professor said. "A therapist, perhaps. A couple years ago I even thought that you were schizophrenic, but I didn't know what to do."

"I'm not schizophrenic…" Dib said. "There were ghosts in the house…"

His father sighed. From the slits in the closet door, Zim could see him put a hand on his son's bony shoulder. "It's alright if you see people walking around the house when they're not really there," he said. "And it's okay if you hear voices in your head."

"But I don't!" Dib yelled, completely forgetting about the camera. "I swear, there were ghosts in the house! I saw them! I heard them, too! I even got EVP recordings of them and I still have the footage from the night vision camera!"

The professor sighed. That had confirmed it; he was almost certain that his son was schizophrenic. It appeared to be both auditory and visual schizophrenia, by the looks of it. "I'm going to schedule an appointment for you next week. You don't even have to go to school if you don't want to, Son."

"I'm not crazy!"

"I'm just concerned," his father replied. "I never said you were crazy."

"You always say I'm insane! Oh look, there goes my delusional son, the schizophrenic lunatic!" Dib violently stood up from his bed. "Maybe I'm bipolar, too! Have you ever thought of that?"

Professor Membrane stood up. "Don't get upset," he said. "I'm sure you're perfectly alright."

"Get out, Dad," Dib said as he set his camera down on the table. "I'm not schizophrenic…"

"Don't forget to eat dinner tonight," he said as he left the room. "I'll see you in the morning…possibly."

Dib set the camera on the bed, then he sat down at his desk and folded his arms together, setting his head upon them.

After seeing that it was safe to leave the closet, Zim carefully stepped out of it. He saw how stressed out Dib was and he cautiously approached him. "Dib…?"

"Go away…" the human muttered.

Zim refused to leave and stood there by the human for a second, unsure of what to do. He hesitated a second before he placed a comforting hand on the human's back. He could feel Dib tense underneath his claws, then the human swatted his hand away. His eyes were slightly puffy, welled with tears. "I'm not schizophrenic, right?" he asked him.

"You? Schizo-pah-renic? Why would you ask me?" the alien asked. "I don't even know what that means."

"You are real, right…?" Dib asked him.

Zim looked insulted. "Am I real? Of course I'm real, you pitiful human!" The alien wrapped an arm around Dib's torso and he slung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, though it took him quite a bit of effort. Dib looked surprised and immediately fought against him, banging his fists against the alien's back.

"Put me down!" he demanded, voice saturated with venom. It was only when Zim's spider legs appeared out of his PAK and carried them out the window and away from the house did he cling to Zim for dear life.

"Am I real? Am I _real_?" Zim scoffed. "Dib, like your father, sometimes I worry about your grip with reality, but not because I think you're insane. It's because I can't comprehend how you can stand these ignorant morons all the time! I'm taking you back to my base to run a diagnosis of you."

"What if it kills me?" Dib asked.

"It won't, I promise, so quit worrying," Zim said, keeping a good hold on the human. He might as well help him. After all, what would he do without Dib? He was the only human who believed in him. He was only human who didn't only have a brain, but he used it, too. What a rarity.

"Will it hurt?"

"Hurt? No, it causes no pain," Zim said in a matter-of-fact tone, making his way through the back alleys so that no one could see them. "We'll see what the issue is with these seizure thingies and then we'll be on our way."

Dib, his upper half hanging over Zim's shoulder, stared at the alien's back as the long spider legs carried them across the concrete floor. "I didn't get to tell my dad…"

"Well, whatever, we'll take care of it," Zim said casually. "Tell your father to work on his social skills, by the way."

"Because that's easy to do to a man I hardly ever see, you know," Dib said sarcastically.

"So why didn't you tell me you had a mother?" Zim asked him, completely changing the subject.

Dib squirmed a little bit. "I never really had a reason to talk about her," he said. "She died seven years ago. I was eight."

"What from?"

"It's a sensitive topic, okay? Now let me down," Dib demanded. "This hurts my abdomen."

Once they reached his house—base, rather—Zim released the human, set him back on his feet, and retracted his spider legs.

"Why do you care, Zim?" Dib asked. "Shouldn't you be jumping at the opportunity of me being disabled?"

Zim paused for a second, his hand on the knob of his front door before he finally twisted it and opened the door. "Why not care?" he replied, stepping inside of his house. "Follow me. I know where to go."

* * *

**Whoo! There's chapter two :3 Crap happens in the next chapter. It's going to be diabolically fun, like brutally eviscerating the scum of the earth with rusty spoons. :3 Also I totally don't mind if anybody drew some pictures of this *sheepish smile***


	3. Debilitating Seizure

**Hey guys, thanks for the reviews and the follows that this story's already received! I can't tell you how much I appreciate it :) Now enjoy character pain. It's lovely, no?**

* * *

"So what's wrong with Dib this time?" Gaz asked, not looking up from her Game Slave when she heard her father walk by her.

Professor Membrane made his way into his kitchen, knowing that he had to leave in only a mere ten minutes. Such little time for his children, such little time for his work. If there was just one more hour in the day, only one, he tried to imagine all the things he'd be able to do with his offspring. But, most of the time, he didn't have any time to even contemplate their wellbeing. He sincerely did care about them, but he was a single parent, and he often didn't know how else to care for them other than leaving them be. His wife had been the one good with children, not him.

But Dib…he had been concerned about him for so long, and now maybe his lack of time spent with his son was actually getting to the child's head. What was he going to do if he really was schizophrenic? It was such a relentless, unforgiving neurological condition, but it would explain so much about him. He talked to himself, claimed to see and hear ghosts, talked about aliens and UFOs, bigfoot sightings, and so much more. Above all, he was convinced that it was all real.

Dib was fifteen now, though it was different when Dib was just a young child. The father thought that it was just a phase he was going through, like how children have imaginary friends at first that they eventually grow out of. He thought that this obsession would pass and that all the ghosts, the aliens, bigfoot, and everything would go away, but it didn't. Dib only became even more obsessed, more manic, more…insane.

Maybe he didn't take good enough care of him after his mother died. Though Dib had only been eight, he had been through a terrifying and frighteningly deep depression. Gaz had recovered okay and found a good distraction in video games, which he thought was healthier than what Dib was doing considering it engaged her mind and helped with eye-hand coordination.

But Dib…he had only confined himself to his room, not wanting anything to do with anyone. He lost interest in everything; school, family, food, literally everything except for one thing, and that was the paranormal. He had found a type of solace in thinking that maybe his mother was still around in a spiritual form as a ghost roaming the house, that maybe she wasn't _truly_ gone.

The depression went away as he aged, but his mood still struck him as bizarre. He never seemed happy, he was obsessive over his passions, and he would go into manic-depressive phases every once in a while.

Remembering that his daughter had asked him a question, he said, "He just needs a quick visit to the doctor next week."

"To fix his head?" Gaz said in a monotone voice, fingers quickly pressing the buttons of her gaming console.

"I suppose so, for lack of a better term." He grabbed the carton of milk and poured himself a glass. Why did he even drink it in the first place? He hated the taste and it didn't benefit him much in the first place.

He sat next to his purple haired daughter. "You might need to have your hair dyed again, sweetie. Your roots are starting to show."

Gaz just growled. "I'll do it later."

Professor Membrane took a sip of the milk. "I need to talk to you about your brother, honey."

"Fix his head so he isn't insane anymore," Gaz replied, still not looking at him. "He's annoying."

"I think he may be sick, Gaz," he said. "Mentally. I've thought of it for a long time."

"Of course he's sick," Gaz said unsympathetically. "He's crazy."

"I think it might be possible that he has schizophrenia, sweetie," he said. "That's why I'm taking him to the doctor, to have him evaluated and put on medicine if he needs it."

"About time," Gaz said. "He was acting weirder than usual today and yesterday."

"That's why I'm concerned…" Professor Membrane said, then he looked at his watch. "I have to go soon, honey. Don't forget to go to bed before nine tonight." He leaned forward and gave his child a kiss on the forehead.

* * *

"You promise this isn't going to make my head explode?" Dib asked the alien. He was extremely impressed with the interior of the alien's base, fascinated by all of the technology the bowels of the structure had. After this diagnosis thing—or whatever it was—he was going to see if he could mess with some of the equipment, whether Zim wanted him to or not. It was a gold mine for a science oriented paranormal investigator like himself.

"For the last time, it won't cause you any physical harm," Zim said as he removed his black wig and his lenses to expose his eyes and two long, sleek antennae. He grabbed onto Dib's shoulder and made him stand in the center of a small ring on the ground. "Now stand still and don't move."

Dib did as he said, glancing around at the intricate technology as a glass tube rose up from the ground, encompassing his body. Zim pressed a large, purple button on a control panel and a brief flash of light appeared around him from every direction, then it disappeared and the glass tube retracted itself back into the ground.

Dib looked at his hands and felt his head. Nope, still intact. He would have been really bummed if he had exploded into a million pieces. "Was that it?"

"Yes, human," Zim said as a scan of Dib appeared on the screen, but it didn't show anything specifically wrong with him. Instead, it said that everything was wrong with him, pointing to all of his organs and labelling them as "foreign objects."

Dib leaned over Zim's shoulder and looked at the screen, glad for once that he was slightly taller than the alien. "You didn't set it to scan a human, did you?"

Zim had an annoyed look on his face and turned the screen off. "Human and Irken anatomy are pretty similar," he said. "I thought that maybe it'd think you were an Irken."

"Well considering our organs are entirely different, you probably should have thought that one through," Dib said.

Zim waved him off, feeling more agitated with his technology than with Dib's jabs. "It isn't programmed to look at humans, but maybe I could fix that…"

Dib quickly became bored with Zim, then he brought a hand to his head when he started to feel a slight headache on the right side of his head. He grimaced and cringed a little as it worsened. He leaned forward against one of the control dashboards, feeling the pain increase. Maybe I'm going to explode after all, he thought to himself.

Zim looked over at him with a concerned expression, recognizing that he was in distress. "What's wrong, Dib-human?"

"I just have a headache," he said, standing up from the dashboard full of switches and controls. "I need to sit down..."

Zim turned his attention away from the scanner when Dib collapsed onto the ground. He rushed over to the human as he curled up on his side. "Dib? Come on, be straight with me. This seems like more than just a puny headache!"

Dib's eyes rolled upwards, then they closed as he started spasming on the ground. He convulsed, violently writhing around, his legs shaking uncontrollably as he fists clenched tightly. He turned a little onto his stomach, struggling to breathe as his diaphragm suddenly failed on him. His jaw clenched with immense pressure, neck muscles straining as he tried to lift his head.

Zim was both alarmed and disturbed at the same time. "Dib-human?! What's going on?" he yelled, panicking as the human stopped breathing, still convulsing and shaking. The human curled backwards, back arching as his legs and arms stretched out. His lips were tinged a slight bluish color.

He had to get him to breathe. Zim knelt down beside the human and turned him onto his side. He tried to get him on his back, but the human's body wouldn't comply. He was stronger than he seemed to be during whatever this frightening fit was. "Come on Dib, breathe! Breathe!" He yelled, striking him across the back.

Nothing happened, so he struck him again and again, shaking his chest as he body started to calm down. He felt dread settle into his stomach. What if the human died? What if this killed him? Out of all times and places, why did this have to happen now?!

Dib suddenly took in a very loud, very enthusiastic breath of air. It was struggled and wheezed, obvious signs of a restrained airway. He violently expelled his breath, blinking erratically as the convulsions stopped. His muscles stopped being clenched and his now red hands relaxed. His legs and arms stopped moving and he started to regain control of his diaphragm.

The human wheezed air in and out of his lungs, struggling to breathe like he was having an asthma attack. He was confused and disoriented and even tried to sit up, but Zim knew better. He grabbed onto the human, gently pushing him back down onto the cold ground. "Don't try to get up," he ordered. "Just don't move, Dib."

Dib opened his mouth, trying to say something as he squirmed a little, then he rolled onto his stomach. He continued wheezing slowly yet loudly, his fingernails trying to dig into the ground beneath him. He slowly pulled his legs a little closer to himself, curling himself into the fetal position.

"Just breathe," Zim said, keeping a hand on the human's side to reassure him that he was there. "Don't do anything else but breathe."

Dib gasped and coughed deeply several times, spitting onto the ground. Zim grimaced, wiping away the spit that was on the human's jaw. He was relieved that he was breathing again, but frightened that it would happen again at any moment.

Zim checked the human's pulse on his neck, feeling that his heart was thundering in his chest. Dib let out a moan that showed he was in pain, then he tried to swat Zim's hand away from his neck. Was he conscious throughout that entire thing or did he black out again?

The alien looked the human over and saw blood draining from his mouth. He wasn't wheezing anymore. Instead, he was just staring forward at the wall blankly, breathing slowly and gently. He looked catatonic.

Zim gently stroked the side of Dib's head where the hair was shaved, carefully petting him over and over again. He wasn't sure if it was comforting him or not, but he figured it was worth a shot.

It took several minutes for Dib to recover. He rolled onto his back into Zim, vision blurry and head pounding. "When'd I…get down here?"

Good, the human was both breathing _and_ speaking now. This was excellent progress. "A while ago," he replied. "Was that a seizure?"

Dib moaned and stretched his skinny body out. "Did I really just have another one…?"

"I don't know, you tell me," Zim said, crossing his arms as he leaned back a little on his knees. His voice didn't show it, but he was deeply concerned and extremely worried. "Are you hurt anywhere?"

"Yeah…everywhere…" Dib said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "I'm gonna bite my tongue off if this keeps happening."

"Do you need a hospital?" Zim asked. "Or whatever those creepy white places are with the people dressed in white coats?"

Dib shook his head. "No, I just need to lay here for a moment…"

Zim's antennae twitched for a second. "Never do that again," he said. "It was the most disturbing thing I've ever witnessed before."

"As if I can control it," Dib said, rolling onto his other side that was facing Zim. He closed his eyes and focused on breathing. "Since when do things disturb you, Zim?"

"Since always," the alien said, gently trying to usher the human onto his feet. "Come, I think the couch would be comfier than the floor."

**Ahhh if I had a heart, I'd feel so bad for poor little Dibby, but I'm too diabolical to have any emotions such as that :3 It's too much fun torturing characters. Now go eat a peanut. Now.**


	4. The Problem

Zim watched Dib as he lay on the couch, eyes closed as he let his body recover from the horrific seizure. There wasn't much else he could do but rest, anyways. The human was sick—very, very sick, and Zim had a feeling it was only going to get worse.

He shouldn't be in his house with an extraterrestrial looking after him. He needed to be with his own kind, with creatures who knew how these sorts of things worked, and people who knew how to care for him. He absolutely hated the idea, but he went over to the phone and dialed the number for Dib's house, twirling the cord around one of his black-gloved fingers.

Gaz was the one who picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Hey, have someone come by and pick up your brother," the alien said.

"Dib? He's at your place?" Gaz sounded extraordinarily irritated. "When did he leave?"

"Hours ago," Zim said. "How could you not notice? He never shuts up."

Gaz sighed. "Why is he with _you_ out of all people?"

"Just come by and pick him up," Zim snapped. "Or send your dad to come and get him. He's sick and I have no idea what to do."

"Is he puking?"

"No, it's something else. I can't take care of him," Zim said.

"Fine, I'll be over in a bit," she said. "Stupid Dib…" She hung the phone up and the other end went silent.

Zim put the phone down, looking at Dib as he rolled over. "She didn't sound too enthusiastic," he muttered. "She's gonna kill me…"

Zim raised a brow. "Just tell her about the seizures and then get your dad to do something about it," he said. "I'll see if I can program my scanner for humanoids."

"You never really answered my question earlier," Dib said. "Why exactly are you caring about this? You seem like the type who would try to kill me, or at least laugh at this whole situation."

Zim looked away. "Because it's disturbing," he said. "What if it happens in the middle of class? Then I'd have to see it again."

Dib sighed. "Figures. It's not because it hurts, it's because you don't want to watch it. Why'd I expect anything different from you?"

Something stung at Zim's heart when those words left Dib's mouth. No, the real reason was because he cared about the human and didn't want him in pain. He wanted him to be okay and back to his normal self, researching the paranormal and chasing him around the city with handcuffs. This version of Dib—the quiet, sulky, worried one where he stared ahead at a wall because he was on the verge of going into what seemed to be shock—bothered him and he hated it.

"I don't want you dying, Dib," the alien said, his antennae perking up a little. "There, is that good enough for you?"

"Strange coming from you," Dib mumbled into the pillow. He looked exhausted and out of energy.

Someone angrily knocked on the door moments later. Zim opened it, Gaz immediately pushing herself right past him and over to her brother. "Come on, Dib," she said, grabbing onto his arm and dragging him off of the couch. "Next time you leave the house, at least leave a note."

Dib struggled to get his feet to work, still sore and cramped from his little ordeal down below. "Sorry…"

"Be more gentle with the Dib-stink," Zim scolded, glaring at Gaz. "Something's wrong with his brain."

"There's always been something wrong with his brain," Gaz retorted.

"I've been having seizures, Gaz," Dib confessed, finally able to stand up straight.

Gaz ceased walking and snapped her head around to look up at him. "You? Seizures? Seriously?"

"I need to tell Dad. I was going to earlier, but we got…distracted…"

"You idiot!" Gaz yelled, striking him across the face. "When something's _that_ wrong with you, you tell someone! Anyone!"

"I did! I told Zim!" Dib shouted, pointing at the alien in the corner.

"Zim doesn't count! You need a doctor! You give me headaches, Dib," Gaz said, grabbing onto her brother's hand once more. She started to quickly bring him down the street.

Zim watched them as they left, sighing the polluted earth air as he closed the door for the night.

* * *

As soon as Dib managed to tell his father what had been happening, his parent had been put into a state of calm panicking. He was at work when Dib called him and—for what was perhaps the first time in known history—he dropped everything that he was doing, passed it onto his lab assistants, and came home immediately. Dib showed him the footage of him having a seizure and his father studied it with an extremely contemplative look on his face, studying the images carefully, pondering.

"What you've been having are called grand mal seizures," Professor Membrane said, handing the camera back to his worried son.

"How bad are they?"

"They're…" he hesitated, "…not the best, Son. I'm going to take you to a doctor tomorrow, immediately, first thing in the morning." He wrapped an arm around his child, giving him a light hug. God, he hadn't done that in years. It had been so long since he had last held his son. "I want you to relax tonight. Don't do anything stressful."

"But _this_ in general is stressing me out," he said. "It's gonna happen again tonight, Dad…"

"I'll be there to help you," he said. "I won't let you be unmonitored. No worries."

Dib leaned into his father and loosely wrapped his arms around him in return. In truth, he was frightened. Terrified. "Thanks…"

Professor Membrane rubbed his thumb again Dib's shoulder, then he said, "You should go to bed and get a bit of sleep, Son. I'll be watching over you."

Dib nodded and stood. "Promise not to let anything bad happen to me…?"

"I promise, Son," he said confidently.

Dib sighed, readied himself for bed, and laid wide awake in his bed, acutely aware of his physical sensations to know when the next attack would be.

* * *

It felt strange, spending so much time with his father. The man was always gone at work and usually slept in the labs, leaving Dib and Gaz to themselves with a good security system to keep them safe. Sometimes his father would be gone for weeks or months at a time, hardly communicating with his children, and hardly acknowledging that they were alive in the world. But now that Dib was scared and had a serious medical condition, the professor had taken the day off. His father took care of him during the night when he fell into several fits of seizures, ensuring that he wasn't in danger of hurting himself against any objects or biting his tongue off. He had comforted him, made him relax once his body had calmed down, and then lulled him back to sleep. Then the father woke Dib up in the morning, made him breakfast, and was now driving him to the doctor's office. All of this special attention felt…weird.

When it came from his father, he liked it.

They actually had time to talk to one another for once, filling Dib with a much-needed sense of positive socialization. He missed his father, even though he wasn't exactly close to him.

His father pulled into the parking lot of the doctor's office and they both stepped out of the car together. He had scheduled an emergency appointment so they took Dib as soon as they walked in.

They showed the footage to the doctor and ran an entire background check on the teenager. Did he have any current medical conditions? What medical conditions did his father have? His mother? Her parents?

They ruled out epilepsy almost immediately. They took a sample of his blood and tested it for for all sorts of possible medical conditions, but everything came up negative. They tried every possible type of test—yes, even a spinal tap, which Dib enjoyed just as much as he would have enjoyed being forced to roll around on a cactus thirty-seven times—but nothing came up. Then, while in the doctor's office, Dib fell back into another seizure, though this one was far milder. He didn't writhe around and violently convulse, but instead it was very minor and passed after nearly thirty seconds. It mainly consisted of him trembling and having a difficult time breathing.

He was very out of it for a good five minutes after, but he recovered quickly. The doctor, determined to have at least a slight idea of what the cause of this was, decided that the last test they had available was a brain scan. So, Dib was prepared, laid down into an available MRI machine, and they commenced the scan.

Dib was annoyed at this point and tired of all the tests. The spinal tap and brief seizure was irritating enough to deal with, but all this fuss over him was making him uncomfortable. He didn't mind it from his dad, but from all of these strangers? No, he was introverted, antisocial. It gave him anxiety.

After the brain scan, he was told to sit by himself outside of the room for a while. He thought it would take only a few minutes, but a very long amount of time passed. He began growing anxious and fidgety. What was wrong? Was it something minor or what something very serious? Maybe they were just waiting for the pictures to finished developing. Maybe he was okay.

His father emerged from the room with a doctor afterwards, and by the solemn expressions on their faces, Dib immediately knew something was terribly wrong. "Do you guys know what's causing it?" he asked.

Professor Membrane gestured for him to come. "We need you to see the pictures so we can explain it to you, Son," he said, wrapping an arm around Dib's shoulders when he stood. This was bad. For them to not tell him right away, he knew that this was very, very bad.

Dib sat down next to his father, nervous and trembling slightly as the doctor gestured to a wall of fluorescent light that had the transparent pictures of the scan hanging in front of it. Dib held his hands together and looked at the pictures. He was confused.

Professor Membrane cleared his throat and said, "I suppose I should really be the one to tell you that the reason for these seizures is because you have a brain tumor in your right lobe, right in the center."

Dib felt himself go cold when he heard that. He became aware of a numbness in his fingers and toes as he looked at his father, the information sinking in. "What…?"

His father stood up and pointed at one of the gray pictures, circling a spherical shaped anomaly in the right lobe of his brain. It was…it was huge.

"We're relatively certain it's benign," his father said, as if it would comfort him. "In other words, it probably isn't cancerous."

The professor and the doctors began talking to him, telling the teenager various things, but Dib couldn't pay attention to them. He was frozen with fear, convinced that he was having some terrible nightmare. Zim was giving him a bad dream. Zim had done something to him and he could reverse it. But he was here, physically here, in this office, in this room, with these people around him, and his headache was still present. He wasn't sleeping. He was awake.

This was what had unexpectedly killed his mother seven years ago. Now he had it too.

Dib didn't know what anybody was saying anymore. He was encompassed by a bizarre sense of frigidness, sound drowning out into quiet drawls in the background. He stared forward blankly as he tried to process the information, then he stood up and walked out of the room while the doctor was in midsentence. He was going to be sick.

* * *

**Oh boy, imagine how this information gets broken to Zim :3 MWAHAHAA**


	5. Breakdown

Dib wasn't in school the next day, or the next, or the one after that. It was typical for him to be late, but to miss three days in a row was very uncharacteristic of him. Zim knew that Dib watched his grades like a hawk, never failed any of the school's tests, and hardly ever skipped homework assignments. He excelled as far as academics went and Zim wished that the Dib-human had the opportunity to go to a better school, with better teachers, and better equipment. This rundown metal prison didn't offer him what he needed to be the best that he could be. If anything, its lack of proper education techniques and technology was only holding him back.

Zim seemed to be the only one to realize the missing student, and after the third day of him being gone, he became too concerned to simply sit around and wait for the human to return. As soon as the school bell rang, he didn't take the familiar route that led to his home. He went straight to that troublesome human's house.

Normally he would have made a beeline to Dib's bedroom window, but he decided it better to use the front door in case a family member unexpectedly found him uninvited in their home. Last time was too much of a close call.

He hoped Dib's scary sister wouldn't answer, but lo and behold, there she was in her gothic entirety, looking annoyed and highly detestable of humanity—more so than Zim himself was. That was a frightening thought.

"What do you want, Zim?" Gaz growled.

"Is the Dib here today?" he asked, clinking his claws together.

"Yeah, upstairs in his room," she said. "He's got some pretty bad news you might want to know about."

Zim stared. "What is it?"

"Just go see my stupid brother," she said as she started to walk away. "His room's up the stairs to the right."

Zim stepped inside, forgetting to close the front door behind him as he walked up the stairs. Right before he stepped inside of Dib's room, he paused, hearing voices behind the door. Curious, he leaned a little closer.

There were soft sounds coming from inside. They sounded peculiar at first, but then Zim recognized it to be…crying? The Dib was crying? Was he in pain? Was he hurt? Zim felt a brief panic, but then he heard Professor Membrane's voice inside. Good, the Dib-human wasn't alone. If he was hurt, then another of his kind could take care of him.

"It's alright, Son," Professor Membrane said from inside. Was he trying to comfort Dib? "There's nothing wrong with being upset."

Dib wailed. He tried to say something, but it only came out as an incomprehensible sob. He was crying into something to muffle his cries. Zim cracked the door slightly, just enough for him to see the teenager on his bed with his father, clinging to the professor's chest like it would save his life. He was trembling, taking in erratic breaths as he cried pitifully.

Zim's heart sank to see him in such a condition. What was so terribly wrong that caused him to act like this? This wasn't normal. Dib was supposed to be at school, trying to expose him as an alien, talking about monsters and extraterrestrials, not showing a display of such extreme emotion. Dib never came across to Zim as stoic, but never once had he shown sadness in school…or at least he didn't publicly display it, anyways. The thought of him silently suffering on the inside while wearing a plastic face pained him. What if he was actually constantly depressed but never showed it? Nobody would know. Zim wouldn't know.

Dib lifted his head up for a second to say something to his father, but he was hysterical. It then occurred to Zim that he wasn't just crying; he was having a mental breakdown. He couldn't speak coherently and he was clutching the white lab coat his father wore, shaking and trembling like he was terrified. He was hyperventilating, tears streaming down his face at a rapid rate.

Professor Membrane grabbed onto Dib's arms and held them tightly to get his attention. "Listen to me," he said, unable to make out anything that his son was trying to tell him. "Stop it. Take in a breath and hold it for ten seconds, okay?"

Dib quickly shook his head, his eyes wide as he sunk down into the bed and into his father, like he had lost all the strength in his arms.

"Dib," Professor Membrane said sternly with a slightly louder, more forceful voice. Zim took a note that that was the first time he had ever heard him say his son's name. "Take in a breath. Now hold it."

Dib did. He took in a deep breath and struggled to keep it in, yet he calmed down. Decreasing the amount of oxygen that he was taking in pacified him considerably. He let his breath out all at once, then he sat upright, straightened out his posture, and breathed slowly.

"There, just like that," Professor Membrane said. "I know this is hard on you, but you'll get through it. No one's going to let this thing win."

"But Mom had the same thing…" Dib whispered, unable to bring his scratchy voice to a normal octave. "It killed her, Dad…"

"This isn't going to kill you," the father said. "You're going to survive. The surgery's scheduled for next week. For now we're just going to have to get through this for the next seven days, and then everything will go back to normal. Understand, Son?"

Zim felt something drop in his stomach. The Dib was in danger of dying? What madness was this?! How sick was he?

Dib took his thick glasses off and wiped his eyes, nodding his head.

His father put a hand on his shoulder and kissed his child on the side of the face. "You're a brave child," he said. "Best son I could have ever asked for." He stood up and headed out of the room.

Zim took a step back to pretend that he hadn't been eavesdropping. Professor Membrane stepped out, looking startled at first to see the disguised alien there.

"Gaz let me in, I swear," Zim said, gesturing down the stairs. "I didn't break in."

"Never crossed my mind that you would," the scientist said. "It's good that you've come by. You're the only person Dib really talks to, it seems."

Zim blinked. "I've noticed."

"Well, go ahead and talk to him," he said as he started walking away. "He really needs someone right now."

Zim watched him leave, wanting to ask him several questions, but he figured Dib would be the best one to answer them. He stepped inside of Dib's room, seeing that the human was still recovering from his little breakdown, wiping his red, slightly puffy eyes.

Dib looked up at him, squinting for a second since all he could see was a blurred mass of moving colors. He judged by the colors that it was Zim, so he put his glasses back on, giving the alien an incredulous look. "What're you doing here…?" he asked, his voice choked.

Zim balled his fists up, his eyes glistening for a second. "What was this I heard about you dying, Dib? What's wrong with you? What are you sick with?"

Dib opened his mouth, then he looked away and moved to the front corner of his bed, leaning against the wall. For once, he wasn't wearing his trench coat. He was just wearing black pajamas pants with a sleeveless shirt, exposing his thin arms. "We went to the doctor's a few days ago," he said, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around him. "I have a brain tumor."

Zim's left eye twitched for a second, his antennae moving upwards a little underneath his black wig. A few seconds of silence passed before he violently grabbed onto Dib's arms, looked enraged. "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?!" he screeched. "YOU…YOU STINKING HUMAN!"

Dib tried moving back, startled by the alien's outburst, but Zim's grip was strong on his arms. His eyes were wide, frightened.

"You leave school for three days without telling me where you are or what's wrong with you?!" Zim yelled. His contact lens-covered eyes began to shine slightly, filling up with…tears? "How dare you!"

Dib ultimately got out of Zim's grasp, quickly moving back away from him.

Zim pointed at him accusingly. "You…horrible human!"

Dib watched Zim heave air in and out of his lungs, more upset than he assumed anybody had ever seen him be. "Why do you care…?" he asked.

"Because I care about you!" Zim yelled. "Yes, I know, fascinating and hard to believe, but who cares? I don't hate you, Dib, I like you!"

"Then why do you always try to…do all the stuff that you do? Like the thing you did with the nanobot back when we first met?" Dib asked.

Zim crossed his arms and looked away. He hadn't felt these types of emotions before; what was he supposed to do? On Irk, it was frowned upon to not only show emotions such as these, but to feel them. They had been outcast and banished from society, just like personal relationships, love, affection, mating—it had all been banished to the point where Irkens were created in factories and literally zapped to a militant life.

But here, on Earth, it was different. Turns out humans went through the same types of emotions Irkens probably did. The main difference was that humans could cry, smile, laugh, cuddle, kiss, and reproduce naturally, whereas it had all been banned with his race. But now that he was alone on this planet—truly alone—there was no one to reprimand him. This feeling of his eyes welling up with wetness and a trembling of the lips, as well as a quiver in the chest, it was all foreign to him. It was caused the possibility of this human that he pretended to hate so much potentially dying from a growth in the brain.

Zim couldn't bring himself to look at Dib. He had begun to realize that he was more of an outcast in his society than a hero only mere months ago. He wasn't loved by his kind, so how was he supposed to express his emotions? He had no idea how to talk to Dib.

"Well?" Dib asked, still waiting for an answer. "Are you crying…?"

Zim scowled, causing the tears to fall down his face. He suddenly raised a hand and struck Dib on the side of the head, surprising him. "Don't ever do that to me again!" he yelled. "You don't just hide something like that from people! You think you can just go through this by yourself? Huh? Do you?!"

Dib held a hand to where he had been slapped. It stung, but worse of all, his made his growing headache even worse. He tried to ignore the pain, more concerned with coming to terms that there was somebody who was actually expressing legitimate concern for him, and it wasn't his father. Above that, it was his enemy. Zim cared about him.

Zim got down onto the bed, sitting next to the human. "How's this getting fixed?" he asked sternly.

"I'm…getting a surgery," he said, still a little shocked by his actions. "They're going to cut my head open and take it out."

"Will you be awake?"

"No, they're putting me to sleep. I won't feel anything," Dib said. "They said I'd be okay, but I'm doubting that…"

"A brain's a delicate thing," Zim said. "You really trust them with this?"

"What else am I supposed to do? Let it grow and kill me?" Dib said. "It's in my head, Zim, inside of my brain, and I can't leave it in there."

"What about the side effects?" Zim asked. "Is there gonna be any permanent damage?"

Dib hesitated. "They said there might be," he said. "They're good doctors, okay? They'll do a good job, but there's still a chance that I'll…well, that'll be paralyzed on my right side if they mess up even a little bit. It could hurt my speech, my motor skills, anything. I have no other choice, Zim."

Zim leaned back against the wall with him, wiping his cheeks of the tears. He took his wig off and his lenses, annoyed at how scratchy they had suddenly become from the overabundance of fluid in his eyes. He blinked several times, his red orbs staring at his own skinny legs.

Dib watched him. "Are you okay, Zim?"

The alien shrugged. "I should be the one asking you that," he said. "I don't want you dying, human. I know how weird that sounds but I don't.

Dib curled up his toes. "Me neither…" he said. "And don't slap me again. My head hurts."

"…Sorry…"

* * *

**Poor Dibby :3 DRAMA**


	6. Special Words

**So you know what I realized that I hadn't noticed before? Dib actually dies in one of the Invader Zim episodes but comes back to life at the last moment. Such darkness.**

* * *

What the hell. That's all that Dib could think of after his encounter.

Zim left shortly after he had calmed down, but not before ensuring Dib for a final time that he really, truly didn't wish death upon him, and that he was sorry for slapping him. After confirming with him that he was going to visit every day up to the surgery, the alien put his disguise back on and left the room.

Dib sat quietly on his bed, looking pensive. He hated to admit it, but he had to. That alien was growing on him. Dib was scorned at school and he was very well aware of that. He was accustomed to being ignored, used to people throwing balls of paper at his head and pushing him around. Being bullied didn't faze him. He literally had no one close enough to him to call a friend and never had, but the feeling of frozen isolation was so familiar to him that he often forgot about it. If anything, he had developed one philosophy; if people didn't like him, screw them. They weren't worth his time.

But every once in a while, it got bad. It would always start as a feeling of loneliness from constantly being shunned, ignored, and shoved away from others. From time to time, being called insane and crazy stung a little bit. Then it would only progress further and further into self-loathing and an intense hatred of all known things, frustration ensuing from his lack of companionship. No one listened to him because they thought he was out of his mind. He would then fall into a deep state of depression, slamming through the bottom of his personality to the point where he had contemplated suicide on more than one occasion.

Once he almost did kill himself during the lowest of all the low points he had ever hit before. It was there, in the bathroom, holding a razor above his wrists that he had sliced his arms open, mutilating the flesh and tearing the veins, sweet blood cascading out of him like a red waterfall. Upon realizing what he had done, the instinctive thing happened; he panicked. He put tourniquets on his arms fashioned out of belts, doing everything he could to stop his bleeding, and he ultimately saved his life.

Figures that the day after that incident, a rather nasty bully shoved his head into a pile of mashed potatoes during lunch and called him a freak.

How many times as he wanted to shoot himself in the head? More than he could count. A few times he had planned out of his death, written loving death notes to his sister and father that he never truly felt close to, dressed himself up, and nearly followed through with the suicide. He remembered wearing expensive formalwear once, trimmed his hair, even sprayed cologne on so he could be the furthest thing away from hideousness as possible upon his death. But he had always stopped himself. He had always become too scared to let himself bleed out, too scared to pull the trigger, too scared to swallow the pills or step out in front of a semi-truck. He had faltered and never followed through with the actions.

And now, after being dreadfully alone and suffering a lifetime of bullying, hatred, and being deemed a psychotic, insane maniac, somebody actually cared about him? It was an alien, nonetheless—one of the very things that he loved. Studying aliens and UFOs had helped ease his depression, as did the rest of his paranormal endeavors. Being engrossed in the paranormal was a good distraction from the pain. Now there was an alien in his class and he felt like he had no right to expose him anymore.

What was the motivation behind exposing him, anyways? It was probably to prove that everybody's thoughts of him were incorrect, that he wasn't insane and that he knew what he was talking about, but what was the point if nobody liked him? Even if he did prove it, he wouldn't be regarded as a hero. In reality, no one would care. He loved aliens like how a six year old loves dragons, therefore, he should embrace Zim's existence, shouldn't he?

For Zim to say that he cared about him was…special. It warmed him. The children at school were more of a nuisance than anything else, but Zim was something else. Finally, maybe somebody could fill in the void in his metaphorical heart and give him actual companionship. A friend.

Just as he began smiling, a terrible pain formed in his head and he grimaced greatly. He gripped his skull gently, moaning at the pain. He laid down on his side to help ease the discomfort that was gradually turning into a throbbing pain. He thought of Zim throughout most of his headache, wondering what else had been going through the alien's mind when he made the confession.

* * *

Zim sat down at his desk, dreading that this was going to be a long, long day. He felt tired. He had spent the majority of the weekend with Dib and learned how to probably care for somebody experiencing a seizure. Number one: don't restrain them. Number two: make sure they won't hit anything they could potentially hurt themselves on. Number three: don't put anything in their mouths to stop them from biting their tongues, otherwise they might choke to death. There were a lot of rules and hundreds of different scenarios for what could happen, but Zim at least knew enough that Professor Membrane trusted him to take care of his son.

Dib probably had around ten seizures in total, four on Saturday and six on Sunday. Each one varied in intensity. Some were quick and short and involved fast, brief contractions of the chest muscles and tensing of the arms and legs, whereas others lasted several minutes and included violent thrashing and convulsing. The one thing all of his seizures had in common was the difficulty breathing. He always stopped breathing during a seizure, then he would start right back up in very loud, struggling, violent manners, his body starved of oxygen. He wheezed a lot after coming out of the episodes, like he had asthma.

Dib had also lost a majority of his appetite over the past few days. Professor Membrane instructed Zim to give him medication at certain intervals throughout the day, and unfortunately, one of the effects of it was nausea. He never threw up the contents of his stomach, but more than once, he had been pretty close to it. He looked pale now. Weak. But, one thing that he had confided in Zim was that he looked forward to him coming over when he could.

Zim leaned back in his chair, looking over at where Dib would have been sitting had the brain tumor never happened. He sighed, vaguely missing him, even though he'd see him immediately after school.

Soon after the bell rang, somebody else stepped into class. Zim looked over, his heart nearly leaping into his throat.

"Sorry I'm late, Ms. Bitters," Dib said, standing there for a second in his long black trench coat with a backpack. He looked very sick and thin underneath his clothes. "I haven't been feeling very good lately."

Zim stared at him, eye twitching as Dib flashed him a brief smile and waved a little. The human went over to his desk, sat down as if everything was normal, and looked at the teacher attentively.

Zim drowned out the rest of the sound the class was making. They hardly even noticed that Dib walked in. He then said, "What the hell are you doing here, Dib-stink?"

Dib looked over at him. "Going to school. Why?"

"You should be in bed!" Zim said, standing up and walking over to him. "You're sick, human, and you aren't in any condition to be here right now!"

"Relax," Dib said. "I've missed too much school."

"I'll bring you your precious homework if that's what you want," Zim said as he grabbed onto Dib's arm, gently tugging it to show that he wanted to bring him home. "You'll be fine after the surgery. Until then, you're staying home."

Dib pulled his arm out of Zim's grasp, though he was slow and didn't do it violently. He changed his tone a little as he said, "I can't just sit at home and do nothing, Zim. It's killing me."

"Don't even talk about death," Zim said. "You'll be on the verge of it if you stress yourself out too much. Besides, you've been having seizures right and left. Have you brain worms as well?"

"I just want a routine for now," Dib said. "Yes, I know I'll have seizures in school, but I'll be okay. The teachers know about what's going on. Even the principal does."

Zim crossed his arms and huffed out his breath, giving him a look of disapproval. "It's routine that you want?"

"I should say distraction, really," Dib said, running a hand through his sleek, black hair. Zim briefly tried to imagine the growth in his brain before he became both disgusted and disturbed by it. "All I can think about at home is this stupid tumor. I don't want to focus on it."

"Play chess or something," Zim said.

"By myself?"

"It's not a single-player game…?" Zim asked. He looked so innocent.

A smirk formed on Dib's lips. "It's two-player," he said. "But theoretically you could play it by yourself."

"I don't like this, Dib," Zim said. "Anything could happen. It's harder to help you here."

"If I have a seizure, let it happen," Dib said. "It'll pass and maybe the idiots of this class will finally understand what a _real_ problem is."

They won't notice a single thing, thought the alien. Zim stared and was about to say something until Ms. Bitters snapped at him to sit. Aggravated, he trudged himself back to his desk and sat. Why, why did the human have to make him worry this much? Now he was going to have to wait until Friday—the day of the surgery—for Dib to not be in school. It was a Monday. This one organism of life was causing him so much stress.

Sure enough, most of the day was normal. It wasn't until ten did Dib curled forward onto his desk in a mild seizure. Zim noticed because it sounded like he was violently hiccupping, looking like he was going to hurl all over his desk, but in reality, they were just convulsions.

Nonetheless, Zim panicked and rushed over to him. The teacher stopped her lecture and all of the students stared at him, not understanding what was happening as the teenager wheezed and struggled to take in difficult breaths, his body rapidly tightening and loosening with the contractions.

Zim ignored the rest of the classroom and put his three-fingered hand on Dib's back, gently rubbing him as he came out of the seizure. He took in a loud breath like he had been drowning, then immediately straightened out his posture, looking both dizzy and disoriented.

Zim heard somebody in the background mumble something at them, but the alien just hissed at him in an animalistic way. He softened his expression when he looked back at Dib, saying quiet things such as "You're alright" and "Don't do anything else but breathe, Dib."

"Should I call the nurse down here?" Ms. Bitters asked in her gruff voice.

Zim shook his head as Dib slouched forward again onto the desk, wheezing and coughing. "No, he's fine. This happens a lot."

Dib stopped after a minute and took in deep, slow breaths. He set his head against the cool surface of the table, facing Zim as the alien gently rubbed his back with his claws. Dib knew that he had just had another episode and was well aware of it, and though he was supposed to recover for a few minutes after, he decided to skip it and sat up straight. "I'm okay," he announced. "I swear, I'm okay."

Zim gritted his teeth. "You need to go home…" he muttered.

"I'm fine," Dib said, eyes still wide. "I'll get through the day. I'm okay."

Zim furrowed his brow and frowned, then he sent death glares to the rest of the classroom who were giving them odd looks. They promptly looked back down to their notes, trying to ignore them.

Zim sat at the desk directly behind Dib as Ms. Bitters began lecturing again. He looked over the human's backside, noting that he especially liked the undercut of his hair. The way how it was shaved on the sides and longer in the center was…unique. It was attractive. He averted his eyes downwards, but couldn't help but look up every once in a while to look over the human.

An idea came into his mind and he felt slightly nervous. Humans were creatures geared towards pleasure, correct? This human was feeling pain. Physical pleasure relieved such pain. Carefully, he reached his hand forward and started to gently trace his claws up and down Dib's back, rubbing him to help ease his soreness.

Dib jumped a little when he felt something touch his back, sending shivers down his spine as he turned his neck around. He saw that it was just Zim giving him a small smile, rubbing his back, not plotting anything mischievous or malevolent. Just simple Zim without hatred.

Dib relaxed, feeling strange that the alien was bringing him a sense of warm comfort, but soon he melted at the gentle feeling of pleasure in his back. It was helping to take away the pain he was experiencing. He relaxed, turning his head forward again to watch Ms. Bitters as the alien rubbed his back. He briefly had the desire to fall asleep.


	7. Private Moment

Zim watched Dib as he laid face down on the bed, breathing deeply as he squirmed around slowly. He clutched the blanket beneath him with his fingers, staring forward blankly with half-opened eyes, wheezing quietly. Zim laid a hand on the shaved part of Dib's head, gently stroking him.

Everything was getting worse. The surgery was just days away, but everything about Dib was deteriorating. He could no longer get out of bed, nor could he eat much of anything. His pain killers weren't doing a very good job at killing pain. He was in constant discomfort, enclosed in the darkness of his bedroom since light was too painful for his eyes to handle. His migraines were debilitating now and the seizures were far more intense and longer lasting. He kept going into catatonic-like periods where he couldn't speak or respond to anything, but instead was forced by his own body to lay on his bed because he was too weakened to sit upright or stand.

Dib had only managed to make it to school that Monday and Tuesday. Today was Wednesday. He just had to survive two more days and then this whole ordeal could be over and done with.

Zim noticed how his father hardly ever checked up on his son. For the first couple of days, it was as if the man's entire life suddenly revolved around Dib, but now, with Zim looking after him, he was nowhere to be found. He was back at work, most likely completely unconcerned with Dib's life.

And his sister? She didn't even care that he was slowly crumbling away into a vegetative state, drifting closer and closer to the dark oblivion of death. Zim learned that Dib apparently had the tumor for longer than the doctors originally suspected, and day after day, it kept growing. It could destroy a vital section of the human's brain. When it's taken out, there's a very real possibility of Dib becoming paralyzed on the right side of his body. He could go blind in one of his eyes. He might lose some of his speech. He could even have all of those side effects, and it terrified Zim to think of Dib being forced to go through such things.

What if all the negative possibilities did happen? He already knew that he'd be pushing Dib around in a wheelchair for a short while after the surgery, but what if his speech was affected so drastically that he couldn't even talk? What if he couldn't communicate his ideas? What if the tumor actually _was_ cancerous, and Dib wound up having brain cancer rather than just a tumor?

Or, worst of all, what if he died?

Zim gently stroked Dib's head as the human breathed slowly. He the human died, he'd have no one. Nothing.

Dib blinked and slowly moved his hand over to the alien as a response, wrapping his fingers around Zim's knee. He squeezed it and said in a hushed voice so quiet that Zim had to strain to hear him, "Make it stop…just make it stop…"

The plea tugged at his heartstrings. He wanted to help him, but he couldn't. Nothing was alleviating the pain. Dib was simply stuck in this state of sheer agony, unable to move much, and unable to speak much.

"You'll be okay, Dib-stink," Zim said.

Dib's chest hiccupped. "No I won't," he said. "I'm not okay…I'm dying…"

"You aren't dying," Zim said. "Just wait until the surgery. You'll be alright."

"I'm gonna die…" Dib said, his eyes slowly widening like he had just been given the death sentence, like his possible fate had truly dawned on him. "Just like Mom…I'm gonna die…"

Zim let out his breath and he laid down next to Dib. He looked so different without his thick glasses over his eyes, but they were causing his pain to become near unbearable, so Zim had taken them off. Turns out that Dib's eyes were extremely weak, far weaker than Zim had assumed them to be. His eyes were terrible even under ideal lighting conditions. Without the glasses, he could only see blurs of color. He couldn't see himself in a mirror without them. In the darkness of the room, despite the low amount of midday light that was still filtering in through the curtains, Dib was completely, totally blind.

Zim pressed his palm against Dib's and interlaced his fingers with the human's. He squeezed gently and Dib did the same. It was always comforting to Zim whenever he did that, mainly because Dib was showing that he was still there, alive, breathing, and metabolizing.

"Can you see anything?" Zim asked.

"Just a shadow…" Dib whispered. "You."

"Anything else?"

"No."

"Good." Zim moved a little more closely to Dib, getting himself comfortable. "Just two more days, you filthy human."

"I'm not gonna make it that long, Zim," Dib muttered. "This hurts too much…"

"How many times do I have to tell you you're okay?" Zim asked quietly, gliding his fingers over Dib's hand. "You'll live."

Dib didn't say anything more. He closed his currently useless eyes, looking sick as ever, and feeling even worse so. Minutes later, he began to tremble slightly, but it wasn't from a seizure. It was from grief of his unfortunate condition. The Dib was crying in both absolute fear and sorrow.

Zim watched him as tears fell from the human's eyes, finding it peculiar how his species tended to hiccup and shake whenever crying. The soft sounds escaping Dib's lip let him know that he was in distress. The alien wrapped his arms around the human in a vain attempt to bring him comfort, hugging his warm body closely.

Zim was all Dib had at the moment.


	8. The Surgery

Friday. The day of the surgery.

Dib was laying on the preparatory bed. He had received a pain killer powerful enough to reduce his migraines to small headaches, so he wasn't in constant agony. There was an IV sticking out of the vein in his arm and a heart monitor was quietly beeping to let the room know that he was still alive, and very conscious.

Zim was sitting on the side of the bed next to the human, his fingers gently holding onto Dib's hand. The human kept a good grip on the alien. He was frightened and had anxiety, but he was doing a good job at hiding it.

Dib's father was standing next to the bed with his hands held behind his back while Gaz leaned against a wall, seeming otherwise unconcerned. If it wasn't for the fact that she wasn't distracting herself with a video game, Zim would have thought that she honestly didn't care about her brother. He was beginning to realize that she simply didn't know how to express her feelings towards him. She actually did care. She just couldn't say it.

Everyone was silent. Dib was slowly stroking Zim's hand with his thumb, then he tightened his grip when the doctor walked inside. The woman had a friendly smile on her face, but it didn't ease the tension in the room.

She talked to Professor Membrane for a while. Both Dib and Zim ignored them completely, Dib communicating his nervousness by how he was holding Zim's hand, and Zim communicating his desire to comfort him by promptly responding with his fingers. Their silent way of speaking to one another felt special for the moment, slowly sending ideas to the other by movements of Dib's five fingers and Zim's own three.

All the times that Dib had been suicidal before felt strange to him now. There had been numerous occasions when he wanted to die, but not now. He wanted to live and now that there was a chance of him dying in the surgery, he had never quite appreciated life so much. He wanted to die at the wrong moments and wanted to live at the wrong times. It was so…bizarre.

The doctor walked over to Dib, still with a smile plastered over her face. "Alright Dib, you ready?"

Dib stilled all motions with his fidgety hand and he shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't worry one bit, alright?" she said as she grabbed a mask and put it over Dib's mouth and nose. It was about to give him the gas that would knock him out completely. In just a few moments, Dib was going to be totally out of it.

The beeping of the heart monitor quickened in pace. Zim stroked his hand again, saying, "You're alright, you filthy human. Zim's here with you."

Dib's eyes closed a little as the gas started to knock him out. He turned his head and looked at Zim one last time. Somehow, he managed to mutter out, "Love you…"

Zim's antennae perked up slightly from underneath his wig, eyes looking surprised. Did he mean that or was it just the gas? Regardless, he gave him a small, friendly smile, bent down, and kissed Dib on the forehead since the mask was in the way. "Humans and their love," he said, fiddling with Dib's hand. "I'll have to look into what 'love' is, Dib-stink."

Dib's eyes closed at that, then he went limp, now completely unconscious.

Zim's smile disappeared, knowing that Dib no longer needed it for the moment. He then stood up, allowing the doctors to roll him out of the room and into the operating area.

For a while, Zim stood there, watching them as they took away the sleeping human. At least he was asleep for the procedure, and at least these humans had the technology to stop most kinds of pain with medicines. After a while, Dib's father got his attention by tapping his arm.

"We should go to the waiting room," he said, gesturing out the door. "It's going to be a long surgery."

Zim's shoulders sagged a little. "I know," he said, following him and Gaz outside. He wrapped his gloved arms around his thin stomach, looking like a skinny stick as he walked down the hallway. They picked two couches facing each other to sit on, Gaz and Professor Membrane on one with Zim on the other. The alien refused to look at either of them.

"So how long have you been in a relationship with my son?" Professor Membrane asked out of the blue, one leg crossed over the other with his hands on them.

Zim's eyes shot up to him. "We're not," he said defensively. "He's my friend. My only friend…"

"That was more than just a friendship gesture back there," the father said. "Dib's been gay ever since he was very young."

Zim stared at him. "He has?"

"Yes, he's never told me, but I've always known," he said.

"Same here," Gaz said, finally speaking up. "Figures my stupid brother never talks about it, but it's pretty obvious since he's never interested in girls."

"Just because someone isn't interested in the opposite gender doesn't make them gay," Zim said, furrowing his brow. "He might not have a sexuality, or he could be bisexual, or whatever else humans can be."

"He's gay," Gaz said with certainty. "Trust me."

Zim looked down at the floor. He was so short that his feet were still suspended in the air.

"Do you like him like that, Zim?" Professor Membrane asked. "Romantically?"

Zim still didn't look at him. "I don't know," he said. "I think. Either way, it's not your business, so just leave it be."

"I'm not a bigot, so don't be afraid of me persecuting you," the scientist said. "Or Gaz."

Gaz just sneered. "Stupid world and its stupid homophobes."

The professor just smiled gladly. "That's my girl," he said. "One day you'll be the leader of a worldwide social movement."

Gaz just scoffed and rolled her eyes, looking back down at the floor.

Zim stood. "I'm going for a walk," he said, not offering to bring anyone with him as he left.

He tried to imagine Dib lying unconscious on the operation table, head cut open and pulsating brain exposed while figures in white coats cut him open, taking out pieces of the dying organ. He imagined them cutting out the tumor, terrified that they'd see it might be cancerous, and if it was, Dib would probably die. Like all cancers, brain cancer was merciless.

The thoughts were too disturbing to him. He once dreamed of dominating a planet of his very own and doing terrible thing to the inhabitants of it, but now, that was all different. He was experiencing emotions and ideas he never knew existed. Before, it was like trying to imagine a new color; the idea of love and friendship was totally absent to him. If someone never saw the color blue, and they were then asked to think of what blue looked like, it would be different from what it really is. This was what these emotions were. He was discovering them, exploring them, and at times, felt frightened of them. His personality was changing. _He_ was changing.

He stepped outside into the earth air and felt the sun on his green skin. It was warm and comforting, like how he hoped his embrace was to Dib when he was in conscious pain back in his old bed. Zim leaned forward against a railing and stared forward across the road. There was a small park adjacent to the hospital where children were frolicking on the playground, swinging on swing sets and seesaws.

How could he have hated these things before? They were better off than he was when he was a mere smeet. These children could run, laugh, play, form friendships, go to school, draw, think, love and be loved. Zim had never been given the opportunity to do so since being born into an extremely militarized society had eliminated such things from their entire species.

At one point, Dib was as innocent as those young children. He probably played with other kids in similar manners when he was three or four, back when his mother was alive, and back when he was happy. Zim assumed he must have been close to his deceased parent. It just dawned on him how sad that boy must have been throughout the majority of his life after her death.

He spent a great deal of time outside, just standing and watching the playing children and the passing cars. A terrible scent then wafted through the air and he lifted his head, contorting his face in disgust. It smelled pungent, disgusting.

He turned his head and saw a middle aged man standing outside the hospital, smoking a cigarette, drawing the toxic smoke deeply into his lungs before slowly exhaling it. As particles of the smoke hit Zim's skin, his entire body started screaming _POISON POISON POISON _to him. It didn't harm him, but his body was having a natural reaction to let him know that the smoke was toxic.

He had seen people smoking on the television every once in a while, and sometimes on the streets, but he had never been physically close to a smoker. He remembered reading an article in school about how the smoke destroyed the lungs, slowly killing the person with time, yet they become addicted to it and continue smoking anyways despite the fact that they're sealing their own fate to a cruel, terrifying death.

What was originally disgust turned to anger. Here, outside of a hospital – a place meant to cure people – was someone willingly making himself sick, purposely poisoning himself. Murdering himself in front of a sacred place designed for saving lives that people so easily throw away.

The smoke was going to destroy that human's lungs. He'd develop tumors and cancer and other awful things. Why, why was he throwing away a perfectly good pair of lungs? Dib was inside of an operation room with his head cut open to remove such a tumor. Oh, what he'd give to have a normal, tumorless brain. Now here was a human oblivious to what a virtue good organs were, and too stupid to realize what a bloody pain tumors were. Medicine wasn't going to save him.

Zim walked up to the human and slapped the cigarette from the man's hand while he was drawing in another breath. The human looked surprised as Zim stomped on it with his foot, looking down at the short alien that was barely five foot two. Zim scowled at him, furrowing his brow as he shoved the man. "You're going to throw away perfectly good organs? Huh?"

The man backed away. "I'm taking a smoke, man, relax."

"You stupid, filthy, DISGUSTING HUMAN!" Zim yelled, shoving him once more against the chest, causing him to stumble backwards. "Why don't you go ahead and trade your lungs with someone who has cancer, huh?! I'm sure they'd _love_ to be in your position, you…you worm baby!" The alien pushed past him, storming back inside of the hospital to leave the bewildered human to himself.

How vile it was to destroy such a good body!

Zim returned to Professor Membrane and Gaz. The young girl was reading a random magazine while the professor was filling out several papers. Zim thought that they were medical papers for Dib, but then he saw that they were work papers. He was working.

For some reason, everything was just pissing him off. He glared at the father and said, "What are you doing?"

Professor Membrane looked up. "Calculations," he responded. "How was your walk?"

"Your son's in surgery and you're _still_ working?" Zim said, his voice quiet.

"Well, it's a long wait. I might as well do something useful with myself."

"Is that all you're concerned about? Working?" Zim said, his voice growing darker and darker with every word. "Where've you been the past week, huh? The first two days, everything revolved around Dib. As soon as I learn to take care of him, you're gone."

"I was at the labs," Professor Membrane said in defense. "I sleep there often."

For once, Zim couldn't stop himself from cursing. "Bullshit!" he yelled, quickly becoming tense. "You work as an excuse not to do anything you're not comfortable with! You work to avoid things!"

The professor narrowed his eyes. "What are you getting at?"

Zim pointed dramatically in the direction that Dib had been taken in. "You should've been home taking care of him, spending time with him, helping him! But no, instead _I_ got stuck with it because I have confused feelings towards him! Did you even see the condition he was in? The migraines, the seizures, he couldn't even get up on his feet! And where were you? Working, again, like how you always do."

"Zim, stop," the father said calmly. "If you allowed me to—"

"Shut it," Zim growled, clenching his fists tightly enough to the point where they began shaking. "I think you concern yourself with your work to the extent you do not because you want to actually help the rest of humanity, but because you wanted to forget about…_her_. The Dib-worm's mother. You wanted to be distracted."

"Zim—"

"And now that Dib's dying, you don't want to deal with it," Zim accused. "You wanted to forget that he has a potentially cancerous brain tumor. You didn't want to take care of him because it stressed you out. You didn't want to see him fall apart like how he did, so you stuck me with it and ran off to your stupid labs!" Zim raised a leg and kicked the couch the professor was sitting in. He pointed a shaking finger at him. "You…you're not even a father! You're just a roommate to your children!"

The man's face sagged, his expression shifting to one Zim hadn't seen before.

"You never associate yourself with them," Zim said. "Isn't that what you humans are supposed to do? Help each other? Love each other? Humans are social animals, Irkens are solitary. We're alone where I'm from, and yet you have the opportunity to _raise children_, and you throw it away. You pathetic, stupid, irresponsible piece of filth!" He kicked the couch again in frustration, everyone in the waiting area now staring at him and the scene he was creating.

Professor Membrane didn't say anything as Zim stomped off again in a different direction, this time deeper into the hospital. He just stared, feeling hurt, and feeling…guilty. He looked over at Gaz, but she just quickly looked away back to the magazine, having nothing to say to him.

* * *

**After reading **_**The Fault in our Stars**_**, I feel like how Zim did towards the smoker every time I see someone smoking, so I felt compelled to incorporate that into this chapter :P**


	9. Waking Up

The wait was agonizing. Zim eventually returned to Professor Membrane and Gaz in silence, neither of them exchanging any words or basic conversation with the other. Ten long hours dragged on by before a doctor finally emerged from the room and came over to them to let them know how it went.

From the expression on the surgeon's face, it must have been successful.

"We've got excellent news," he began. "The tumor was benign, so there are no traces of cancer in Dib. The surgery was successful and the entire tumor was removed."

Zim had never felt such a greater wave of relief than he did in that moment. It felt like a heavy stone had been lifted from his body, like he was floating.

"There was an issue that came up, though," the surgeon said, pushing his glasses up a little further on his nose.

Of course there was.

"It was tricky to get out and we had no choice but to damage one of his optic nerves, so he may be totally or partially blind in his left eye. Or he might not be, but we'll only know when he wakes up."

Professor Membrane pinched the bridge of his nose for a second. "His right eye is the weaker one…" he mumbled. "So he just lost his good eye…"

Zim felt something get tugged inside of him when he heard the news. He stood up and asked, "Can we see him?"

"He's still unconscious," the surgeon said, "but if you're family, then of course you can."

Zim glanced at the professor, a moment of silence between them.

"He's family," the scientist said, also standing.

They walked into the room that Dib was being kept. He looked pathetic, lying on that white bed with a thin sheet pulled halfway up his body, connected to various tubes and IVs and all sorts of odd machines. There was a strikingly white bandage wrapped around his head. The heart monitor beeped very slowly and calmly, the human breathing evenly. He was alive.

The alien walked over to the human, watching him for a moment before he sat down on the bed. Something inside him made him want to shed a few tears, almost like how he had when he had first received news of Dib's tumor, but the feelings were different. He wasn't enraged like the last time. He raised a hand and put it on the boy's chest, feeling his weak heartbeat. He looked so tranquil and peaceful there, all unconscious and being monitored by cold machines.

"His medicine will start to wear off pretty soon," a nurse said. "Don't be surprised if he acts a little funky. Anesthesia does that to people."

"Funky how?" Zim asked, looking up at him.

"A lot of people cry when they wake up," he said. "Some hallucinate, others just hyperventilate, but sometimes they're perfectly alright. It's just a natural reaction."

"Right…" Zim said, stroking Dib's chest. He grabbed onto his left hand, squeezing it lightly. Dib squeezed back ever so slightly, his fingers twitching as he started to come out of the calm abyss of drug-induced unconsciousness.

Dib slowly started to wake. First his eyes struggled to open, then he began to squirm slightly. His face grimaced as the heart monitor sped up, his breath quickening. He released Zim's hand and let out a quiet moan, his eyes looking teary and glazed over.

First he hyperventilated like nobody's business. The nurses tried to calm him down, but he only started to cry. Zim knew that he wasn't aware of his own crying, knowing that he was still under the strong influence of the drugs. Dib then started to mumble quietly, saying between breaths, "The air…it tastes like…purple."

Damn. Those drugs were pretty powerful on him.

While the hyperventilating started to slow down, his incoherent ramblings became clearer and louder. He mentioned something about people killing moose and defiling cream cheese. He looked at Zim, his eyes becoming very wide. "Look! An alien!" he exclaimed, the nurses still calming him, assuring the "family" that this was normal.

Dib looked past Zim. He hallucinated that Bigfoot was in the room with them playing a violin, then he became freaked out when the hallucination apparently stared back at him and yelled that he ate his doughnuts.

Zim had to bite his cheek not to laugh. He was getting all of the negative immediate side effects of the anesthetic and it was, quite frankly, funny. Hilarious.

It only took roughly two minutes for Dib to go back to normal. He looked confused, unable to remember waking up or crying or hallucinating. One of the nurses gave him a syrupy medicine to drink that he could take in extremely small sips.

Now that his body had calmed down, Dib simply breathed and relaxed on the bed, not feeling any pain from the potent drugs he had been given. Zim knew that they'd wear off eventually and he'd be in agony later on, but for the moment, he was alright. He even smirked at his family with the left side of his face.

"Am I alive?" he asked weakly, his voice slurred like his tongue wasn't working properly.

"Unfortunately," Zim said jokingly. He stroked Dib's right hand but noticed that he got no response from it. "You're alright."

"They got this bandage over my eye," Dib said, reaching up to touch his face with his left hand. There was no bandage there and he looked confused.

Zim hesitated, deciding to let Dib figure it out on his own.

Dib felt over his face again, convinced that there was something covering his left eye, but there wasn't. "Dad…?" he said. "I can't see out of this eye…"

Zim could hear the professor sigh audibly and take a few steps closer. "Your optic nerve got damaged when they took the tumor out," he said. "Can you see anything out of it? Shadows, maybe?"

Dib just froze, silent for a long time. His smile was gone. "No…" he said. "What…why…can they fix it?"

Professor Membrane shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Son."

"But…" he looked around, checking everything out. He didn't have his glasses on so he could only see blurs of color, only able to distinguish who was who by their colors and heights. "I'm half blind now…?"

His father nodded sadly.

"But I could hardly see anything in the first place…" Dib said. His voice was choking up.

Zim squeezed his right hand a little more tightly, but still, he got no response. The alien held up Dib's hand for a moment and asked, "Can you feel this?"

Dib looked at his hand, jaw slackening slightly. He tried to move his right arm and leg, but they weren't complying. They shifted a little, but that was about it. Soon, real tears formed in his eyes, and it wasn't a reaction to the anesthesia. He tried to get himself to sit upright but the right side of his body simply wasn't working for him. He could still feel a bit in it, but everything felt mostly numbed, and he had extreme difficulty moving anything on his right side. He started crying.

His father and sister move closer to him, but none of them knew how to comfort a newly disabled person. Dib struggled with his body for a bit before he gave up and laid on his back, chest shaking. He started wailing, balling his eyes out in frustration and sorrow. He wasn't ready to lose such a thing.

"Son," Professor Membrane said, putting a hand on his child's arm. "You're not permanently paralyzed. The left side of your brain will learn to take over, so it's only temporary. I'll schedule physical therapy. We'll do everything we have to."

Dib trembled, then he put his good hand over his eyes, sobbing quietly as he wiped his tears. Zim felt like he had to help him somehow in some way. Maybe he could figure out human neurology and use Irken technology to fix his brain. Maybe he could make a robotic eye, if he knew how to. Maybe he could figure it all out. Maybe he could fix the human, stop his crying.

Dib stopped himself from sobbing after a few moments, struggling to say, "At least…at least…no more seizures. I'm alive…"

"Precisely," his father said, rocking back and forth on his heels.

"I can't be in here," Gaz said, turning around to leave. She couldn't stand the sight of her brother in such a condition. To her, it wasn't right. She was too used to seeing him determined in his endeavors, chasing aliens and Bigfoot. Now that he wasn't like this, she felt like the room was suffocating her.

Professor Membrane chased after her out of the room, mainly to ensure that she wasn't going to leave the hospital. He already had enough to worry about with Dib.

Zim didn't say anything once they were alone. He looked at Dib, then he slowly bent down and hugged the human very gently, setting his face against his warm chest. He could feel Dib's shaking body relax when he was embraced, then a hand snaked up the alien's side and hugged him back weakly.

"You better not worry about anything, Dib-human," Zim said. "I'll help you."

Dib said nothing, but he did tighten his grip a little on Zim.


	10. Heading Home

Zim pushed Dib forward in the quietly creaking wheelchair. There was a large scar on the human's head where it had been cut open, but hair would eventually grow to cover it. After residing in the hospital for a couple of weeks, the bandages had been taken off, and he was stable enough to go home. He suffered some relatively severe headaches, but the cavern that had been left in his brain filled with cerebral fluid and he was going to be okay.

Professor Membrane checked him out of the hospital, but to Zim and Dib, it felt like it was just the two of them. They ignored the scientist completely as they left, not thinking twice before leaving him without him noticing.

Dib had wanted to get outside for a little while, so Zim decided to push him the entire way back home. It'd take maybe an hour, and the alien didn't exactly feel comfortable with how overcast the sky was, but he was smart enough this time to grab an umbrella beforehand. He could smell the fresh threat of eminent rain in the air. "Stupid Earth and its stupid rain…" he muttered.

Dib turned his head slightly, asking, "What's in the water that you can't handle? It burns you."

"It's not the water itself," Zim explained. "It's the pollutants and acids in the water. It's the same thing with processed meat. It's the stupid chemicals and impurities."

"So you'd be fine if the water was clean?" Dib asked, his speech still slightly slurred. Zim briefly wondered how long it would take for the other side of his brain to take over the movement of the right half of his body.

"Yeah, and I might be able to eat the meat too, but I don't want to risk it," Zim said. "The peas at school make me sick enough. I don't want to imagine what meat might do to me."

"I don't eat meat," Dib said. "But it isn't because it makes me sick. I just don't like thinking of that animal being alive at one point."

"But you eat animal products, yes?" Zim asked. "Eggs? Milk?"

Dib shook his head. "None of that," he said. "It just…doesn't sit right with me."

"No wonder you're as skinny as you are, human."

"My head hurts," the human complained, and rightfully so.

"Gee, you only had doctors poking around in there with sharps tools," Zim replied sarcastically. "If we were back on _my_ planet, nothing would have had to touch you to fix your big head."

Dib huffed out a breath and rested his head against his fist. "Fuck you," he muttered.

Zim blinked. "The Dib is swearing? But the Dib never swears."

"Just shut up," Dib said, closing his brown eyes.

The silence that ensued was awkward, Zim trying to figure out what he had said that was wrong, and not quite understanding Dib's mood change. "Did Zim hurt you?" he asked after a while.

Dib sighed. "No," he said, lifting his head again. "I've been hurt in far worse ways before. It's nothing, just forget about it."

"If the Zim hurt the Dib, then the Zim is sorry," the alien said.

Dib looked down to the ground. "It's okay," he said quietly. "I just never expected anything like this to happen."

"No one does," Zim added.

* * *

He had to find a way to get the human's sight back. Even if he could still see out of his right eye, he just felt like he had to. Dib was already technically more than half blind since his right eye was so incredibly weak, and if anything happened to it, he'd be completely blind. He didn't want to risk it.

Zim stepped inside of the hidden compartment in the house's kitchen and pressed a button that brought him down into the heart of his base. He took his wig off and started to take off his contact lenses. They were all scratchy and annoying, anyways.

There was a mirror attached to the side of the elevator. He turned his head and looked at himself in it, noting the huge contrast his eyes had. The one without the lens was a very deep, shining, ruby red, while the other with the lens was a cool blue. The contrast between the warm and cold colors struck him as odd, as if one eye was the darker side of the hatred he once had and the other was the change he was experiencing into being more…mellow. No, that was too philosophical.

He was anything but peaceful and loving, and he truly did despise humanity and all of its stupidity, but his heart – squeedely spooch, actually – felt a yearning of kindness for the one human he cared about. There was a strange sense of satisfaction he felt when pushing Dib around in the wheelchair, more intense than the kind he would get when insulting the human back at school. Perhaps it was a sensation of mercy he was experiencing in knowing that his own ex arch nemesis was physically disabled. The Dib was weaker now, easier for the picking, but no, it was something else. He didn't feel hostile towards Dib. He wanted him to be okay, alive, breathing, healthy, and happy. All the rest could rot.

While he was looking at his eyes, a brief thought occurred to him of removing one of his own eyes and giving it to the human. Irken eyes were sturdy things. They could detach from the skull and still be connected to the brain by a solid, strong, stretchy cord, and they could be placed back into the head immediately without being damaged. If they burned, they would heal themselves within a few hours. They were self-regenerating organs and on top of that, he had come to notice that his own eyes were much, much stronger than the average human's. He could see in almost total darkness and was very sensitive to different hues of color that other humans appeared to be blind to.

But no, he wasn't willing to take his own eye out. He needed both of his. Besides, Dib would need to constantly wear a lens over it anyways to hide the obviously inhuman orb. Even then, his body would probably just reject the eye and think that it's a foreign object, of which it technically would be, and ultimately try to destroy it. It'd just be unrealistic.

The elevator door opened and he took off his other contact lens. He set them down carelessly on a nearby table, then he went to work with trying to figure out how to fashion a robotic eye.

* * *

**By the way, I don't actually know if Dib's a vegetarian or not, I just felt like making him one for the sake of the story :P I think he ate chicken in one episode but I can't remember.**


	11. Helpless

**I would just like to say thanks to the person who reviewed this story and said that this story personally touched them due to current life situations. Your comment really hit home to me, too. :)**

* * *

Zim didn't trust Professor Membrane to help Dib during the day, and Gaz couldn't miss any more school than she already had this year or else she risked attendance failure, so he took the day off to watch over the human. In a way, he didn't mind helping the Dib-human, but when he saw the look of pain that was constantly plastered on his face, it always brought his heart down a little.

Dib had lost the ability to walk properly for the moment. Eventually he'd go back to normal, but for now, he needed help eating, moving, cleaning, changing clothes, hell, just about everything. He was going to have to relearn how to make his own bed. On top of that, his headaches were crippling at best.

Save for the Irken and the human, the house was empty and silent. Zim was in the kitchen trying to figure how to work a microwave, unsure of how to heat up the leftover soup. It smelled disgusting to him, but apparently the strange concoction of salty liquid with white chicken chunks and squishy noodles was easy for a human to digest and thus helped to relieve pain.

Eventually he managed to figure out how to work the strange device after spending numerous minutes trying to decipher the writing on it. He still had slight difficulty in reading English letterings since they were so different from the ones back on Irk, but his brain was capable of processing well enough. It just made him frustrated.

He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms over his chest, waiting for the food to finish heating up. At soon the microwave went off and let out a high-pitch beeping noise, Zim jumped and quickly covered his antennae. The noise was so sharp and loud to his sensitive antennae that it hurt him, even though it was only a mild beeping noise to the average human.

He ripped the door open to stop the noise, relaxing once the terrible sound ended. He sighed heavily and took the soup bowl out, his gloves protecting his three-fingered hands. He headed up the stairs and gently cracked open the door to Dib's room, seeing the weakened form of the human laying understand the covers of his bed.

The room was dark since Dib's eyes couldn't seem to handle any large amounts of light without causing him pain. Zim quietly walked over to him with the soup bowl in his hands, quietly saying, "Dib? Are you still awake?"

Dib moaned but didn't move. Ever since they got back from the hospital a few days ago, he could only focus on recovery. Eventually Zim was going to have to do physical therapy with him, teach him to get his own clothes on, take his own showers, et cetera. But now, he just seemed so…pathetic. Helpless.

Zim set the bowl down on the table and pulled back the covers off of Dib. "Alright, you stinking human, time to eat."

"I don't want to eat anything," Dib slurred. "I feel sick."

"Last I read, animals eat food for fuel," Zim said. "Fuel makes them stronger. Right now, you need more fuel, at least before you start losing weight."

Dib slowly pushed himself upright into a sitting position, pain strewn across his face. Zim sat beside him and grabbed the bowl, then he spooned up a bit of the food and held it to Dib. Dib just shook his head and refused to eat it.

Zim furrowed his brow, quickly becoming frustrated but remembering that he had to be patient. "Dib, you need to eat something."

"…It has chicken in it…" Dib muttered out.

Oh yeah. Dib the vegan.

Zim sighed and set the spoon down. "Sorry," he said as he sniffed the soup. He was still frightened of trying to eat meat, so he set the soup aside, afraid that it might be poison to him. "Is there anything else you'd eat? Like a meatless soup? Just something?"

Dib shook his head again. "I'm not feeling good," he said. "I'm gonna have a lot of make-up work once I get back to school…"

Zim looked at the ground for a second, thought about that. "I'll do it for you," he said. "It's easy stuff anyways. Inferior to Irken knowledge."

Dib looked at him. He had to tilt his head in a funny way, like his depth perception was off when he wasn't wearing his glasses. "No, please don't. You're already do—"

"Silence, human, you have no choice," Zim said as he leaned back and waved him off with a casual hand.

"I'm more afraid of you writing 'destroy all humans' in blood for every answer," Dib replied.

"Nonsense, I'll get everything right," he said confidently, then he stood. "Come on, it's almost seven at night and you haven't taken a bath in three days. You stink."

"Gee, thanks," Dib said, though he only laid down again. "I don't want a bath."

"Too bad," Zim said. He grabbed onto Dib and dragged him out of the bed, startling the human a little as he picked him up bridal-style with his arms.

"Put me down!" he yelled, then grimaced at the pain he experienced from the noise. "I just wanna sleep, Zim!"

Zim ignored him and brought him into the bathroom. Dib tried to fight against him, but he was feeling queasy to his stomach and could only move his left arm and leg. He eventually gave up, resting his head on the nook between Zim's shoulder and neck, looking both defeated and annoyed.

The alien set Dib down on the toilet and closed the door to the bathroom for a bit of privacy. He turned on the faucet to the tub, still nervous at the polluted water touching his skin, but his gloves and shirt were waterproof. He'd be protected from it.

"I really don't want to, Zim," Dib said as he put his weight on his left leg and struggled to stand up. He started hobbling towards the door, his right leg dragging behind him uselessly with his right arm dangling down limply. He didn't even get to reach for the knob before Zim pulled him back over to the tub.

"Bath," he said in an authoritative tone. "Now."

Dib just tried to squirm away. "Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is to be naked in the room with you? I said no!"

"Well would you rather have Gaz do it?" Zim retorted.

"Well, no…but still!"

"What about your dad then, hm? You think that'd be any more awkward?" Zim asked.

"It's just…I don't like it," Dib said. "Yeah, I'd rather have you in the room than Dad or Gaz, but still…"

"You humans, always so concerned about little things," Zim said. "Everyone's naked underneath their clothes, Dib. Now come on, I'll help you take your shirt off."

He couldn't get his arm through the sleeve, so Zim had to lift it up and over his head. Dib was pretty thin to begin with, but he was losing even more weight since his first seizure. His ribs were poking through his sides and he grabbed onto his bad arm in an uncomfortable gesture.

Zim watched him and sighed, then he turned his back. "Alright, if it means that much to you, I'll let you try on your own and I won't watch. Is that fair enough?"

Dib didn't say anything at first, then Zim could hear the shuffling of clothes as he tried to undress the rest of him. He had to sit down on the edge of the tub, quickly becoming irritated with his lack of mobility. He needed Zim's help to get into the water without falling in and causing a mess.

"See? That wasn't so bad," Zim said as he grabbed a bucket, filled it with water, and poured his over Dib's head. The human seemed to have relaxed when he felt the warm water cascading down his body, causing him to loosen up a little.

"I guess not…" Dib said as the alien scrubbed shampoo through his hair, or at least, what was left of it after the surgery. It felt good to get the bodily muck and grime off, especially as Zim massaged the soap into him. At the same time, it made him feel weak, like he couldn't do anything for himself anymore. A simple bath was a big ordeal.

He started feeling sleepy after a while as Zim babbled on about something, but he wasn't paying attention. His eyelids were heavy and closed, his mind focusing on how pleasurable the water was. If he could forget about his headache for a few moments, he'd happily take the opportunity.

"…Are you even listening to me?" Zim asked after a while when he realized how zoned out Dib was.

"Hmm?" Dib raised an eyelid and looked at him.

Zim sighed. "Never mind," he said, pouring another bucket of comfortably hot water over him.

Eventually, Dib leaned back and reclined a little, only to fall asleep a few minutes later. Zim sat there and watched him for a while, reflecting on how peaceful he seemed to be when he was asleep, and how…vulnerable. If he wanted to, he could take a knife and rip his organs out. He wasn't going to and he didn't want to, but he realized that he and Dib must have reached some new level of trust. Dib could sleep with his former enemy in the same room, naked and helpless, without a second thought. Something about that felt special.

After a few moments, Zim moved from where he was sitting on the edge of the tub to down on the ground, his back to Dib. He crossed one leg over the over and looked up at the ceiling, sighing deeply. Never in his entire life did he ever imagine doing something like.

And, quite frankly, he didn't mind much.


	12. The Secret

Dib woke up once the water was lukewarm, hardly aware that he had even fallen asleep in the first place. Zim had changed positions again and was sitting on the toilet with his gloves off, inspecting the black claws on the ends of his fingers.

He looked up when he saw that Dib had awakened, flashing him a smirk. "Sleep enough, human?"

Dib sat upright and felt goose bumps forming on his skin from the lack of heat. "Sorry, I didn't mean to," he said, looking at Zim's three-fingered hand. It was longer and lankier than he thought they looked without the gloves on, and they even appeared to be fragile. "Why do you always wear gloves?"

Zim uncrossed his legs and stood up. "Because Irkens can taste with their hands," he replied. "I guess Earth butterflies have a similar thing going on for them. It just distracts me less when I can't taste everything I touch."

Dib gave his hands a curious look as Zim put his black, elbow-length gloves back on. "I like that," he said. "For evolution, I mean. You'll be able to tell if something's poisonous without having to put it inside you first."

"Exactly," Zim said in an almost arrogant way. "A human body's poison detecting system isn't very good. Humans can only taste with their tongues, which means some of the poison would already get inside of you before you know it. Irken bodies are just sensitive to impurities, like when that guy was smoking and it touched me, and it made me freak out."

Dib raised a brow. "When did that happen?"

"It was outside the hospital during your surgery," Zim said as he went over to him. "Why do humans do such things? Smoking cigarettes? My antennae and my skin went haywire from it. It even detected traces of polonium and radioactivity."

"Eh, well, that's drugs for you," Dib said as he started to get up. Zim grabbed onto his sides and helped him stand, then he practically had to pick him up to get him over the wall of the bathtub. Dib wasn't a very heavy person—in fact, he was extremely light—but the angle was awkward and made it difficult to get him over. "People get addicted to things like that, and then there's just no end to it."

"But it's self-destructive," Zim said as he wrapped his friend in a towel and began to dry him off. "It'd be easier if they killed themselves if they really want to die. Faster, too."

"Most of the time, they don't want to die," Dib said. "It's a matter of whether or not they care. If they don't care that they're going to lose their tongues, their ability to speak, and will eventually drown in their own cancerous fluid that fills their lungs, then okay, fine. Who am I to care?"

Zim seemed to have been thinking for a moment. "Are you being sarcastic?"

"I can't tell," Dib said, grunting as Zim roughly ruffled his hair with the towel. "It's just stupid to start something like that in the first place. Those who do know the consequences, understand them, and recognize how terrible they are…now _that's_ something I can't grasp."

"Yeah, well, as far as I know, your species is the only one that commits suicide too," Zim said. "I guess that humans are just naturally self-destructive. Maybe that's a byproduct of overpopulation?"

"Beats me," Dib said. "What about Irkens? Do they ever kill themselves?"

"It's sort of a rare concept, but I suppose so," Zim said. "You never hear anything about it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I do know that it was very common back when things were bad, far before I was made and before the Irkens started invading other planets."

Dib looked at him, his curiosity suddenly intensely sparked. "Why?"

"Take a look at your planet," Zim said. "There are seven billion people, and look at how difficult it is to distribute resources in the most populated areas. I heard that China and India are particularly bad. Now imagine another planet that's only slightly larger, only there are fifty-two billion inhabitants."

"Oh…" Dib said. "There were that many Irkens?"

"There're more now," Zim said. Dib noticed how his voice sounded heavy. "Our planet couldn't sustain our species because we had become so successful in surviving that we ruined our own home. I remember learning that Irkens became cannibalistic to survive at one point, and that's why we set out to conquer planets, to save ourselves. We need more space, so we took it. That temporarily solved the issue, then we moved on to more and more planets, militarized ourselves to survive, and enforced some damn strict population control methods. Natural birth's been outlawed, so we're all made in factories according to the demand in population. If no new soldiers are needed, no Irkens are made. If a lot of soldiers are needed all at once, a bunch of Irkens are made. Everything's militarized."

"So…do Irkens have the ability to…you know…have kids?" Dib asked. "Is it still possible?"

"Of course," Zim said. "That was never eradicated in case there was a species-wide emergency and we need to produce more offspring to keep us going. But one of the contributing factors that led the Irkens to overpopulate so quickly is that the large majority of us are hermaphrodites, not just male or female."

Dib grabbed his glasses from the counter and put them on as they worked on getting him dressed. He looked at Zim and was quiet for a second. "So…you're a hermaphrodite?"

"With male tendencies, yes," Zim said. "There are some that are entirely male, and there're some that're entirely female, but most of us are both. I can either give my DNA to another to have them carry our offspring or I can take someone else's and have my own."

Dib struggled to get his arm through the damn sleeve of the shirt once more. "So do you ever have…you know…urges?"

Zim lifted an antenna. "Urges? Like what?"

"To have kids," Dib asked. "To reproduce. Do you ever want to?"

Zim shook his head. "No," he said. "It's because I have other things that keep my brain busy. We're trained to not have those sorts of desires. Why, do you?"

"…You won't judge me, right?"

Zim nearly scoffed and smirked at him, ruffling the human's damp, black hair. It vaguely reminded him of a raven. "Asking Zim not to judge is like asking a politician to tell the truth."

Dib chuckled. "I get urges to have sex, not to have a baby," he said. "But that's just because I'm still in that awkward phase of maturing. Hormones are a pain."

"It'll pass," Zim said, helping Dib to sit down on the toilet so they could get the rest of his clothes on. "You're only sixteen, Dib. It's normal for someone your age."

"I know," Dib said, shifting his weight a little as they managed to get his pants back on. Something that was so easy before was now incredibly difficult. "So do you Irkens have different sexualities, too?"

"Different…? Yeah, I guess," Zim said. "It's safe to say that most of us are bisexual, I suppose, but we're not supposed to fall in love like how humans do. That's been outlawed too, and it's just…it's really frowned upon by society. Irkens value being strong, and love is seen as a weakness. Either way, I don't know what's wrong with humans and their stigmas against anything that's different from what they know. I've seen some of the things people do to…what do you guys call it? Lays and gesbians?"

Dib tried not to laugh. "Gays and lesbians, Zim."

Zim frowned and lowered his antennae. "It's not my fault, Dib-human. I'm still learning the colloquial language."

"Well for future reference, gays are homosexual men, lesbians are homosexual women," Dib said. "The latter of which was named for an ancient lesbian poet from the Greek polis of Lesbos. I think her name was Sappha or Sapho, or something like that."

"I hate Earth history," Zim said, grabbing onto Dib's arms as he gently helped him stand up. "It's boring, and it's all the same thing over and over again. Oh, the Europeans hated the Native Americans, so they committed genocide of them on American soil. Oh, Hitler hated the non-Aryans, so he killed them. Oh, the Americans hated the Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor, so they went out and killed all of them too. Human history is just the same thing over and over and over again. Does your species really never learn? Or change?"

Dib shook his head. Zim took a slow step back, allowing Dib to put a portion of his weight on him as he moved his good leg forward. It then occurred to him that Zim was going to be the one to teach him how to walk again. "Humans don't really change much," he said. "Still bloodthirsty little fuckers."

Zim snickered. "Got that right," he said. "Maybe that's a side effect of being an intelligent species. Irkens are bloody, too."

The progress they were making was painstakingly slow. It took forever for Dib to get one foot in front of the other, and even then, he was mostly just hopping forward on his good leg while the other one remained useless. While his left hand was tightly gripping Zim's arm, his right one was just lying there. The fingers attached to it would twitch every once in a while, but that was about it.

As soon as they got back to the bedroom, Zim helped him sit down on the bed. He was about to say something until Dib said, "Can I tell you a secret?"

Zim blinked his red, glossy eyes. "I suppose so. Zim _always_ likes knowing secret knowledge."

Dib just smiled a little. That sounded more like him, not the philosophical, sophisticated version of him that existed just five minutes ago. "I'm gay," he said as he laid down on the bed.

He watched Zim for a while, waiting for him to reply, only to become awkward when he got none. Zim just tilted his head with his antennae raised, eyes blinking. "That was a secret? Dib, your family already knows."

Dib just stared. "What?"

"They told me at the hospital," Zim said. "Gaz knew for a while but just didn't say anything because she doesn't care. I guess your dad had a hunch or something. Stupid humans and their stupid hunches…but they've got nothing against it."

"I…didn't know that," he said.

Zim just grinned. "Looks like I'm the one who knew the secret," he said, straightening out his posture. "Alright, Dib-human. Is your stomach feeling well enough to eat?"

"Much better," he said. "For the moment, anyways."

"Good. Vegetarian soup it is," Zim said as he left the room.

Dib watched him leave, still enjoying how his skinny legs never touched when he moved and how Zim swayed his hips slightly when he walked. He may have been an Irken with "male tendencies," as he put it, but he had quite a few feminine characteristics about him as far as pretending to be a human went. Maybe it the magenta and pink shirts and the slight curves he had to his sides. Either way, he was gorgeous, especially without the fake hair he wore as part of his cheesy disguise.

Maybe Zim just identified himself as a male even though he could carry his own young, same way how a transgender identifies themselves as the opposite of their physical sex. It would make sense, but Zim was both. He probably just chose being more masculine over being feminine.

Zim returned only moments later with a bowl of warm, steaming vegetable soup. This one smelled so much better to the alien than the last one that had the chicken in it. For once, there was a human food that actually smelled appetizing to him.

Dib sat up and leaned against Zim for support. They didn't say much to each other as Zim spooned the soup, blew it to cool it down, and then fed the pretty much disabled human. He eventually put the spoon in Dib's bad hand and helped him hold it, his green appendage holding both the utensil and the human's hand in place as he guided it from the bowl to his mouth. The muscles of Dib's fingers just sort of locked in place since that was all that he could really do at the moment, but it was at least something.

Dib imagined that he would have felt pathetic or humiliated at needing assistance in eating, but he didn't, not with Zim. He knew that he didn't care. He just always had this notion that it would be degrading to him, but he felt oddly comfortable, even when some of the soup started to dribble out from the right corner of his mouth. Zim just smiled a genuine smile and wiped it away like it was nothing. Yeah, they were making a mess, but who cared?

Dib was still leaning against Zim as he finished the small meal. It felt good to have something in his stomach while his nausea was temporarily gone.

Zim set the bowl down on Dib's nightstand, though he made it evident that he didn't want to take it downstairs to clean it. It wasn't so much that he was lazy, but rather, he simply enjoyed spending time with the—_his_—human. His own human.

"I'll get back to normal one day," Dib said, still leaning against Zim. "At least we know this won't be forever."

"It's alright, Dib-human," Zim said. He hesitated a second before he lifted an arm and wrapped it around Dib's side in a friendly gesture. Dib looked at Zim and the alien just smiled, moving some of that raven-black hair out of his brown eyes, gently stroking it. "I might as well do something useful with my existence. What better way than to help you?"

Dib smiled and put a little more of his weight against him. Zim then extended his neck forward and pressed his lips against Dib's, giving him a sweet kiss that came seemingly out of nowhere.

Dib jumped a little, looking both surprised and nervous, which only caused Zim to pull away. Oh shoot. Did he not want the kiss? Was it an unwelcome gesture? Were they not close enough to share such a bonding? But no, a huge grin just spread across Dib's face and he went in for a second kiss, placing his good hand behind Zim's head. He kissed him for a few seconds, savoring every moment of it until they both pulled away simultaneously.

"…You want to stay the night?" Dib asked.

Zim smiled. "I was planning on it, anyways."

* * *

**ISN'T THAT JUST HEARTWARMING**

**I WANT TO GO HUG A PUPPY NOW**


	13. School

"Good morning, sunshine!" Professor Membrane chimed with his booming voice as he walked into Dib's room the next day, still dressed in his typical lab coat and black boots. "It's a great day to be alive!"

Dib moaned and rolled over onto his other side, directly into Zim, who was hidden underneath the covers. Zim squirmed a little before popping straight up from underneath, completely disheveled and seeming to be startled.

"Aw how cute, you're dressed up as an alien," Professor Membrane said, walking further into the room.

Zim froze. Oh, Irk! His contact lenses, the wig, he forgot to put them on! He whipped his head around and looked at the much taller human, ready to throw a threat of laying eggs in his stomach at him.

"I didn't know you were staying the night," Professor Membrane said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Won't your parents get worried if you're gone all the time?"

"Dad, it's seven in the morning," Dib complained, pulling the covers over his head. "Leave us alone…"

"There's such a thing as knocking, you know," Zim said as he crawled over Dib and stood up from the bed. Since the idiotic scientist thought he was just dressed up as an extraterrestrial, there was no reason to be alarmed or concerned anymore. "And you should really let your kid sleep as much as he can, especially nowadays."

"Well I can't him sleeping in until two in the afternoon every day now, can I?" Professor Membrane said.

Zim glared at him. "In his condition, it'd be healthy. Where've you been for the past three days?"

"At work, of course," he replied. His good mood and chipper tone of voice was incredibly irritating to Zim. He just wanted him to go away. "We have a huge project underway, one that I'm sure will change mankind for the rest of the foreseeable future."

"Great," Zim said, not seeming to be interested as he went over to several bottles that were on Dib's desk. They were various pills, all medicines that Dib had to take at various times of the day. Dib was having a hard time remembering small things such as that, so Zim decided to keep track of it for him for the moment.

"It's a never ending energy source that doesn't require fuel," Professor Membrane proclaimed as if Zim had asked a question. "Electricity will be provided to everyone—without charge, I should say."

"Have fun with that," Zim said in an uninterested way as he opened one of the bottles and took out a fairly large, pink pill. He had already set out a glass of water so he picked it up and walked over to Dib, pulling the covers off of him. "Come on Dib, time for the first pill of the day."

"I'm feeling nauseous again…" Dib said.

Zim sighed. "I know you are. Here, just take this. I'll try to find something to stop the nausea."

Dib flipped himself around to look at Zim, then he took the pill and had a difficult time swallowing it with the glass of water. He let out a heavy breath, hoping that it would actually take away his migraines. His eyes seemed darker, probably from stress and lack of sleep. "Thank you…" he said in a very tired voice.

"Zim, you should be getting ready for school," Professor Membrane said. "The last thing you want is attendance failing."

"The last thing I want is you screwing up Dib's medication and not keeping an eye on him," Zim jabbed.

"Now come on Zim, you know I wouldn't do anything like that," Professor Membrane said. "I've had to deal with more complicated and confusing things before."

Zim narrowed his eyes at him, then he started to speak to him in rapid Irken. Dib opened his eyes and looked at him as he made harsh rattling noises in the back of his throat combined with sharp clicks of his tongue and teeth. It definitely sounded like an alien language, alright. Though he couldn't understand what he was saying, Dib could tell by his body language that he was angry, probably telling his father off for not being more responsible with his ailing child. Either that or he was cussing at him for pushing the responsibility onto him, but Zim said that he didn't mind taking care of him. He even kissed him last night.

"Zim, I don't know what you're saying," Professor Membrane said.

Zim made a swiping gesture with his left hand and approached the scientist aggressively, causing him to back away out of the room. The clicks and clacks became louder and more forceful, Zim using sounds that the human mouth wouldn't be able to replicate.

The professor got the hint and promptly turned around and left. Zim straightened out his back once he was gone and huffed out a breath, rumbling something in the back of his throat. He looked at Dib and said, "I'm sorry, he's just…he isn't being an expert in the whole 'caring' section of being a human parent."

Dib only grinned. "That was amusing," he said.

* * *

Dib decided that it was time for him to return to school the following week. He had missed a couple of weeks now at this point and didn't want to crush Zim with the amount of makeup work he'd have since he had taken the liberty of doing all his homework for him. He had copied Dib's handwriting well enough for no one to suspect anything since the teachers were tricked into thinking that Zim was teaching Dib his missed lessons and having him do his own work. No, Zim was too sweet to let Dib stress over such a thing.

As Zim pushed Dib up the ramp and into the school, he could tell that he was somewhat self-conscious about being in a wheelchair. Zim wondered why. He knew that Dib was used to the ridicule of other human beings and it never appeared to bother him too much, but then again, then he had always been lithe and agile, quick to run away from danger. Zim was very well aware that he had been physically assaulted by numerous bullies in the past, but he was also aware of the fact that it was always difficult for them to catch him. Dib wasn't athletic, but he was still fast and thin, and easily fit into small spaces where the thick-muscled jocks would find it nearly impossible to get into. Besides, he was flexible and able to get himself into spots that a normal person wouldn't be able to.

But, now that he couldn't run without falling on his face, he seemed nervous and fidgety. He couldn't flee from anyone. No doubt he was afraid of somebody attacking him, and considering how scorned he was by the majority of the crappy school's population, Zim understood why. That was one reason why Zim wasn't going to leave his side.

A few people glanced at Dib when they saw Zim pushing him in the wheelchair, but other than that, most seemed to have ignored them. It was only when they entered their classroom did they begin to hear people muttering about them quietly in the background every once in a while, as if they were too stupid to realize that the duo could hear them despite the white noise of side conversations.

Zim brought Dib over to his usual spot in the front row of desks on the very extreme left. Ms. Bitters looked at them, but didn't comment.

"Maybe I should have waited another week…" Dib mumbled, adjusting the bottom of his trench coat so that it was covering his legs. Apparently the human was constantly cold. Zim briefly wondered if he had a blood circulation issue, remembering how cold to the touch Dib always was, but he shoved the thought out of his mind. Nothing had ever been mentioned to him of Dib having a circulation disorder and he shouldn't worry about it. He had enough things to keep track of, never mind developing fears of disorders he _didn't_ have.

"If you want to go back home, I'll take you," Zim offered, sitting down in Dib's desk with his friend to his left. "And if they say no, then I'll rip their eyes out and replace them with meatballs."

Dib gave a low chuckle and leaned into his good arm. "Thanks, but I might as well stay while I'm here," he said.

"If you change your mind, tell Zim," the alien said.

Class wasn't going to start for another ten minutes, so while Ms. Bitters prepared whatever grudgingly dreary and outlandishly boring lecture that she had for the day, the rest of the students slowly trickled in. Zim's antennae could easily pick up on their conversations, and while most of them were about things he honestly didn't care about, he did pick up on a few about them.

"They're supposed to be enemies," one girl said. "Why are they sitting with each other?"

"They aren't even fighting," the other commented. "They're so weird. And Dib looks like an emo."

A small while passed before a relatively large, thick-limbed boy walked up to them. His smile was cruel and Zim clenched his hands together into fists. He immediately had the image of this kid trapping Dib in a corner and beating the living daylights out of him.

"Hey Schizo," he said, referring to Dib as he ignored Zim's presence. "What got you turned into a cripple?"

Dib glared at him, but he had had a history with this kid Torque. He had been the subject of being picked on by him since elementary school, and it followed him throughout middle school and into high. Up until recently, it had waned considerably, especially after an incident when Torque cornered Dib in the janitor's closet and Dib threw an acid into the bully's face in self-defense. But, now that Dib couldn't even stand without the help of another, he was ripe for the picking.

When Dib didn't say anything, Torque just moved closer and tried to press the issue further. Zim was amazed with the patience Dib always had, and he even envied him to an extent, for he lacked the same amount of willingness to wait. Zim stood up and grabbed onto Torque's arm, his glove-covered claws still sharp enough to poke deeply into Torque's skin, like small needles that didn't quite puncture entirely into the bully.

"Lay off," Zim growled. Dib could see his antennae quivering underneath the black wig.

Torque snarled back and went to raise a fist to punch him, but then the bell rang. The bully looked off to the side for a brief second, then he lowered his fist, ripped his arm out of Zim's grip, went to his desk in the back of the room, and promptly sat down to leave them alone.

Zim heard Dib mutter a quiet, "…Thanks…"

Zim sat down and sighed, then he patted Dib's knee in a friendly way, hoping that nobody noticed the gesture.

"Alright class, today's lecture will be on the atrocities the Japanese committed in China during World War II," Ms. Bitters said, her lanky, skeletal-like body standing up from behind her desk. "As well as the Japanese Internment Camps in America during the same time period."

Dib seemed to have been legitimately listening in to her, but Zim zoned out immediately. Oh, how he hated these lectures. He found it hard to believe that the human species as a whole seemed to have never learned from their mistakes. How is a species supposed to make progress and advance when it's so self-destructive?

The thing that struck him the most was how he noticed America always being portrayed as the hero in a majority of the school lectures. From what he could tell, as an outsider from a different world, America only joined World War II to act out revenge against the Japanese for bombing Pearl Harbor, not to kill Hitler and stop the Nazis. All the atrocities taught about the concentration camps in Europe and yet Ms. Bitters was the only one to mention that the same thing was going on Asia, and that America itself rounded up people of Japanese decent and put them, against their will, into internment camps. Many of them died.

So, from his point of view, America wasn't really the hero. Nobody was in this world war.

As Zim started to think about the moment he had with Dib when he had so unexpectedly kissed him, someone starting snickering behind them. It was a girl, about two desks back. Zim had a hard time hearing her, but he managed to make out enough words to understand that she was talking about them. He could tell by the context of how she called them "homos" that she meant it in a negative way.

That tittering tongue…she just wouldn't shut up! Her whispers of insults to her friends aggravated Zim.

Then, from the corner of his eye, right when Ms. Bitters turned her back to the class to write something on the board, somebody threw a ball of paper at Dib's head. It simply bounced off and Dib only glanced at it, still being used to such treatment, but it enraged Zim.

Zim stood up, grabbed onto the back of his chair, and suddenly whammed it into the side of the girl's head, smashing it with such force that she didn't even have enough time to scream or react. He had used the whole force of his lean body into swinging that chair, ultimately rendering the girl unconscious upon impact. He had knocked her out.

Zim put the chair back down to its rightful place in front of his desk, eyes scanning the classroom in an angry manner.

"ZIM! GET OVER HERE NOW!" Ms. Bitters roared. The whole class was silent.

Zim snapped his head around to her, his eyes narrowed into aggravated points. How disrespectful these worm babies were! Dib had just had a brain tumor, a lengthy and risky brain surgery, major paralysis in one side, _and_ he lost sight in one of his eyes! And these people don't even care. Instead, they're like vultures who've found a wounded rabbit. They saw Dib as easy prey, not as someone worthy of pity or extra help. If these morons realized that if they helped the weaker members of their species, they'd flourish easily. Rather, it's as if their species eat the wounded ones. All the crap that Dib had gone through and not one person seemed to have cared why he was in a wheelchair, why Zim was suddenly his friend, and no one commented on the large scar across Dib's head where it had literally been cracked open. Not. One. Single. Person.

"ZIM!" Ms. Bitters yelled again, snapping Zim out of his angry thoughts. Instead of walking over to her, he just sat back down next to Dib, who was giving a look that was a mixture of awe, shock, and incredulity.

"Continue," Zim said, putting his feet up on the desk and crossing one leg over the other.

Ms. Bitters looked at the unconscious girl, the students around her looking very startled and unsure of what to do. She picked up a phone and called the nurse.

"Zim…all she did was throw some paper at me," Dib said.

"I don't care," Zim replied, crossing his arms over his chest. "And I don't care about her, or any of you other idiots here!" He glared at the rest of the class. Even Torque seemed intimidated.

Now feeling like the unofficial, self-declared spine of Dib (since he didn't really have one considering he always let people walk all over him), Zim felt a sense of accomplishment. Yeah, he physically attacked another person, but it felt good. So good. Like he was doing something meaningful to the disgusting creatures sitting around him.

Ms. Bitters just gritted her teeth together and gesticulated violently to the door. "Principal's office," she snapped. "Now!"

Zim gave her a murderous look, slammed his palms down against the table as he stood up, and marched out of the room.

Dib just sat there dumbfounded, half of him wanting to tell Ms. Bitters that he needed Zim to come back before the end of the period to help him, half of him wanting to scold Zim for his behavior. But at the same time, he felt…happy. He was glad that Zim attacked that girl. He had the sudden urge to laugh and the corner of his mouth twitched upwards just for a split second.

No, he wasn't mad at Zim for getting aggressive. He was happy he had defended him. Nobody had ever protected him in his entire life, and now somebody had. That was one thing that he wasn't going to push away under any circumstance. He loved this newfound feeling of protection.

In a way, it felt like he finally had a guardian.

* * *

**So much character development in that little snippet about World War II. SO MUCH. I DON'T KNOW HOW SUBTLE IT IS, BUT IT'S THERE.**


	14. Alone

It was at the very end of class that Zim returned. The unconscious girl had woken up only a few minutes after being out cold, then she was taken down to the nurse with a possible concussion and potentially broken jaw. He looked pissed off and angry, and right as he was halfway across the room to Dib, the bell rang.

Dib watched Zim as he put their school supplies away in Dib's old backpack, the rest of the class hustling to leave. "…How much trouble did you get into?"

The alien didn't look at him. He just zipped up the bag, slung it over his back, went behind Dib, and started pushing him forward. "They wanted to suspend me," he said. "I told them a vacation would be nice, but my currently disabled friend needs my help and I have to stay in school. I also told them to suck it in Irken."

"So no suspension?" Dib asked.

"They didn't say," Zim replied. "But I don't think so. I persuaded them and gave them a pity story about you, and considering how to stupid the monkey-brains running this school are, I think it worked."

"Usually people get demerits for attacking someone."

"Oh yeah, I got one," Zim said. "But I don't care. I'm the superior being, not them."

Dib smirked. "Still think you're better than everybody, huh?"

"No, I think _we're_ better than everybody," Zim replied. "Everyone else is just a stupid."

"A stupid?" Dib said. "Everybody's a stupid?"

"Yes, because 'stupid' is a noun," Zim said jokingly. "How a species like the humans become a dominant one doesn't make any sense. I still can't figure out what's _wrong_ with everyone here."

Dib leaned back a little, his face tensing when he felt a pain in his head. "Everyone's got something wrong with them," he said. "It's just that some try to make it other people's problems while others keep it private."

* * *

The pain…all what Dib could think about was the throbbing, sharp pain in his head. The medicine had worn off by the time it was seven at night and the headache was severe enough to the point where he could only lay face down on his bed, in the dark, with no noise. Zim had gone home to make sure Gir hadn't blown up the base. For the first time in a couple of weeks, he was completely alone for a few hours.

He brought a hand up to his head and he gripped his black hair, turning onto his side a little since his body decided that maybe going into the fetal position would help a little. It didn't, but he stayed curled up anyways. He moaned. All what he wanted for the throbbing to stop.

In some vague way, he had a small wish to be back in that splendid little era of time where he was alive but not born. No one had the capability to remember being born, or any time before it, but he imagined that the peace and warmth of just floating in the fetal position and having no worries or pain would be wondrous. He could still remember how wonderful his mother had been to him. She had, in a way, been his only true friend. Then one day he came home from school and learned that she was in the hospital for being "just a little sick," as his father had put it.

Bastard. Yes, it made sense that he wasn't going to explain to his eight-year-old that his beloved mother had a brain tumor so deep in her head that it was going to kill her any moment, but Dib still held a small grudge against that. Being only eight, Dib was always ecstatic whenever she came home from work, so he was just disappointed that he didn't know when she'd come back, not worried that she was going to die. He waited by the window for her until it was dark outside, just waiting and waiting and waiting for her to drive up to the house, get out of the car, and welcome him with a hug and a kiss.

Except that day, she never came home, and the last time he saw her alive, she was unconscious in a white hospital bed. He never got to say goodbye to her, never got to tell her thanks for all the kindness. He never got to thank her for being the only person in the whole world who was kind to him. Never got to say thanks for bringing him down to the park, thanks for telling him to ignore the world and follow his own desires, thanks for telling him that whatever he believed in is real if he believed strongly enough, thanks for being his friend. There were lots of "nevers" in his life after she had died.

A short while after she passed away, somewhat towards the middle of his first experience with depression, he became obsessed with the possibility of her being a ghost. All he wanted to say was "Thanks Mom, I love you," and he never got to. He wanted to find a way to talk to her ghost and though he was as young as he was, he pursued it fervently. He spent day after day and night trying to talk to her. He tried to get EVP recordings, tried to capture anomalies with a night vision camera his father had in the basement lab, tried everything he could.

But nothing came up. There was just silence. Nothing appeared in the pictures. Once he put out a small piece of paper in the center of his desk and said, "Mom, if you're here, just move the piece of paper." When he checked in the morning, it never moved.

He used to call his mother's old cell phone before his father canceled it and threw it away just to listen to her voicemail message. The recording would always say, "Hi, I'm not here right now, I've got two kids in my hands, heh. Leave a message!"

After the voice ended, there would just be total silence on the other end of the phone. Dib left hundreds of silent voicemails, never saying anything as he dialed the number over and over again to listen to that recording. He just wanted to hear her voice, even though it wasn't going to talk back to him. He liked to pretend that maybe if he dialed it one more time, she'd pick up. Someone would. But nobody did. He only got an eerie quiet.

There was this small device called a white noise box he got several years earlier that's supposedly meant to let disembodied voices filter through rapid frequencies of white noise, so Dib worked on acquiring one. Determined, he managed to get his hands on one eventually, turned it on, and tried to talk over the loudness to see if someone, _anyone_ would respond. Instead there was just the unnerving sound of the white noise coming from the box, and silence. Dib would just sit there lonely in his room, trying to talk to a dead person who would never come back. He didn't want her to be dead. He just couldn't accept the fact that his one friend, the one person who loved him, and the one person who made him happy, was gone.

Normally children will be told by their parents that, in the event a loved one, a friend, or a pet dies, that they went to a special place called heaven where they'd be happy forever, waiting for everyone else to eventually come and join them. Dib wanted to believe in a god and wanted to think that his mother was up there floating on a cloud in heaven, happy and smiling, waiting for the day her little baby dies so that she can hold him again in her arms. Dib wanted to look forward to the day he'd get to meet that wonderful woman again. He wanted to look forward to dying and wanted to see it as a passageway from one existence to another. He just wanted to believe in something, something that would give him hope that he'd be reunited with her.

Instead, he was an atheist. He had no god, no heaven, no hell, no devil, nothing. He believed in ghosts and alternate dimensions, and he believed—knew, actually—that creatures didn't just simply stop existing after death. Hell, he had even summoned a supernatural creature once named Mortos der Soulstealer. He _knew_ that death wasn't the end, but it seemed to have been for his mother. She was just gone. Erased from existence. Where was she?

Maybe she was on a cloud, waiting patiently for Dib and Gaz and Professor Membrane to die so they'd all be a happy family together up in heaven, away from pain and hate. But Dib didn't think there was a heaven. He envied the religious.

Dib told himself to stop thinking about it. It always made his eyes water and always made him just…sad. Really sad.

He thought of Zim instead. Zim the enemy who became a friend. Zim the friend who had the possibility of becoming a potential lover. Zim the possible lover who could lead to the possibility of potential marriage, and Zim the potential marriage partner who could lead to the possibility of potential reproduction, and poten—

Dib opened his eyes. "Oh my god," he said. "I didn't just think that. No, I did _not_ just think that…I don't want to…no, just _no_…"

Yes, they had kissed several times now and he had feelings for Zim, he'd admit that, but they weren't boyfriends. They were friends with Dib having to depend on Zim. But wasn't that what love led to? Friends, partners, marriage, possibly babies if one so desires, and a whole life together? It just dawned on Dib that he could, quite literally, be choosing Zim to spend the rest of his life with.

Or he could be making a terrible choice. They could be totally incompatible, completely horrible for each other, and that would end in a tragic heartbreak and possible depression (at least for Dib, anyways). They'd go back to being enemies again, but Dib wouldn't be able to fight someone he had loved. The thought was a little overwhelming, to say the least.

His scrunched his toes together. He liked the thought of having a boyfriend. He had been wanting one for a while, but he was so hated and outcasted at school that he knew it was impossible. Maybe he should just go for Zim anyways. He liked the alien.

Dib reached over and grabbed his phone. He dialed Zim's number, and after three rings, the alien picked up.

"Hello?" said the familiar voice.

"Hey Zim…" Dib said. "Are you uh…gonna come over?"

"Of course I am," Zim said. There was a slight undertone of stress in his voice.

Dib smiled a little. Zim had only been gone for a few hours, but he already missed his voice. He loved it when he laid down next to him on the bed and snuggled him or slept. He liked having Zim be the one to push him around in the wheelchair. The fear of incompatibility was still there, but the excitement of having someone care about him was stronger. Yeah, he wanted Zim. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, just…give me a few moments, okay?" Zim told him.

"That's fine," Dib said. "I'll see you soon. Love you."

"L…love you too, Dib-worm," Zim said, then he hung the phone up.


	15. Therapy

**I'm surprised by all of the positive responses this story has received so far. Thanks guys! :)**

* * *

This was tiring. Humans were so needy, especially when they were disabled from caring for themselves.

Zim really did like Dib—a lot, in fact. But day in and day out, pushing him around, cooking meals for not just him but Gaz as well (he was afraid of being beaten by her if he didn't share some of the food), keeping track of Dib's medication, helping him bathe, doing his homework for him, doing physical therapy with him—it was getting overwhelming. Although, Dib _had_ started to do his own homework again because he felt like he was just being a burden, but he was right-handed. That meant he had to learn how to use his left, and that itself was a whole new type of frustration.

What Zim figured out he needed to do was to get Dib to walk again. Once he could walk, he wouldn't have to help him to the bathroom or the shower anymore, not that he minded. He found helping Dib bathe to be quite enjoyable, and he couldn't figure out why. It was just pleasurable. Either way, he needed to start crossing some of the responsibilities off his list. Once Dib could care for his physical needs, Zim could help him focus on other things.

Zim walked in through the front door of the Membrane house. Gaz started to leave it unlocked for him since he came and went so frequently that she was tired of answering the door every time the bell rang. He went upstairs and entered Dib's nearly pitch-black room.

"Still seizure free?" Zim asked rhetorically with a smirk as he walked over to him.

Dib smiled at him. "Yep," he said, raising his left hand to touch Zim.

Zim grabbed onto his hand, knelt down beside his bed, leaned forward, and kissed Dib on the cheek. He then slid one arm underneath Dib's chest and pushed him upwards so that he was sitting. "Did you want me over for something specific?" he asked.

Dib shifted himself so that he could sit without support from Zim. "Not really," he admitted. "I just wanted to see you."

Zim leaned in a little closer, putting his hands gently on Dib's waist as he kissed him on the lips. Dib was still smiling as he kissed him back, then he let out a breath when Zim moved his hands from his waist to his thighs. While he had Dib distracted, Zim suddenly grabbed onto his arms and yanked Dib upwards so he was standing.

"Zim—what the hell?!" Dib said in surprise, stumbling for a second. Zim kept him from falling. There was a small look of disappointment on his face, like he wanted Zim to keep kissing him with his hands on his thighs and hips.

"You're going to start learning how to walk," Zim said. "Today."

"Zim, I can hardly move my—"

The alien shook his head. "I don't care," he said, taking a step back. "You're going to walk whether you want to or not."

Dib hopped forward on his left foot. Zim noticed that the grip he had on him with his good hand was strong and firm, like he was afraid he was going to crumble down into a helpless pile on the floor, while the other just simply rested on his arm. Zim himself had a good grip on Dib's forearms, allowing the human to put his weight on him for support, but that right hand…it just bothered him. It was weak and limp, the fingers mostly unmoving and not grabbing onto him, though they did twitch every once in a while like they were reassuring him that they were still alive.

Zim took another slow step back, watching Dib carefully. His right leg just hung limply behind him, his foot dragging across the floor uselessly. The alien frowned.

It was a relatively pivotal moment in his life when he realized that he was going to be the one responsible to teach him how to walk again. Something that his mother did for him so long ago was now gone, and Zim had to make Dib do the process all over again. But, at the moment, he was just concerned with the human, not with the changes to his own personality or morals. He hadn't even been paying attention to those as of late.

He got Dib to hobble out of the bedroom and into the hallway. "There you go," he said. "You're doing perfect. Just try to bring your other leg forward. You're letting it fall behind."

Dib furrowed his brow, looking frustrated as he shifted himself a little and brought his right leg forward just a little bit, but he couldn't do much else with it.

"Good, now try to put a bit of your weight on it," Zim said.

Dib tried and could keep some of his weight on it for a moment, but then the knee buckled. He caught himself and said, "I don't want to do this, Zim."

"You have to," Zim said, taking another step back.

"No, Zim, I really don't want to," he said. "Not right now."

"You're the one who wanted me over," Zim said. "This isn't going to be easy, human. Accept that now to spare yourself the agony of it later."

Dib let out an exasperated breath. He was just trying to help. In fact, he _was_ helping, but he hadn't gone to many physical therapy sessions, and even then, most of it was spent with Zim outside of the doctor's office. They did a lot of stretching and rolling a weighted ball back and forth to each other. The small exercises were supposed to help Dib eventually regain control of his right side, but for the moment, they were tedious and, when they visited the doctor, expensive. His father – roommate, more like it – wasn't sparing any expense for Dib's healthcare, so at least he did something.

Zim only brought Dib down the hallway and back to his room, figuring that that was good enough for a start. He then sat Dib down on the floor with his legs straight, doing the typical routine of the therapy that was easy for Zim but very difficult for Dib.

Zim sat down adjacent from him and put the soles of his feet against Dib's, then he reached forward and grabbed onto Dib's hands. "I hate this one," Dib muttered.

"I know you do," Zim said as he started to pull Dib towards him, stretching out just about every muscle in the human's legs the further he pulled. He could see the discomfort in Dib's face, feeling sorry for the other. He paused when he realized that he was feeling…pity? He was feeling pity?

Dib looked up at him and raised a brow. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"Yeah…I was just thinking," Zim said as he released Dib so he could sit back up again.

"About what?"

"Everything," Zim said. "Come on, we're doing this for the next fifteen minutes. Then we're doing everything else."

Dib groaned. He knew that it was just helping him, but still, it was harder than he ever thought it would be.

* * *

It was around eleven at night that Zim fell asleep. Dib was wide awake, unable to fall into unconsciousness, though he was comfortable with the alien snuggled up closely to his side. Zim was laying facedown with one arm over Dib's chest and the other curled up underneath him, his head turned off to the side. He vaguely resembled a sleeping puppy.

Dib had one arm underneath Zim and he could feel him slowly breathing in and out, the faint pulsation of a heartbeat underneath that green skin. He liked it when Zim was like this. He looked incredibly peaceful and innocent as he slept, his thin, bony body doing nothing else but breathing. Dib always loved how incredibly warm he was, same way how he loved that Zim's hairless skin was always outrageously soft to the touch. He pulled Zim a little closer.

There was a sound from downstairs and caused Zim's eyes opened immediately. It was just the door opening, Professor Membrane finally coming home for a short while from days of work. The Irken lifted his antennae and pointed them towards the door, listening to the quiet noises. He then set them forward and felt around in front of him for a second like an insect before he put them into their rightful position behind his head. He pushed his skinny body upright and let a nearly silent chirping noise from the back of his throat. He started to crawl over Dib to stand up.

"It's just Dad," Dib said, putting his hand on Zim's back and stroking his spine like he was a cat. "Don't worry about it."

"I just need to tell him something," Zim said, standing up from the bed.

_This shirt feels funny_… Zim thought as he moved towards the door. He was wearing one of Dib's larger shirts that was more like a short dress on him than anything else, going quite far past his hips. The collar was too wide and the shirt was tilted to the side, exposing Zim's bony shoulder and part of his arm. He had a very short pair of black boxers on underneath—again, belonging to Dib—but they were covered with by the large shirt. He saw his reflection in the mirror and noted how much he resembled a skinny girl, but he didn't care.

He wasn't wearing anything on his feet, so he could taste the floor as he stepped on it. He didn't mind that Irkens had that sense on their hands and feet, but he did mind how horrible the carpet tasted and how stale the wall was when he ran his hand along it.

His antennae flicking, he quietly made his way down the stairs, hardly making a sound. He saw Professor Membrane standing at the kitchen counter, sorting through a huge stack of paper. He looked both stressed and exhausted.

Zim crossed his arms over his chest, goose bumps forming on his skin from the chill in the air. He cleared his throat to get the father's attention.

The scientist glanced at Zim, hardly even noticing the lack of Zim's disguise. Zim was used to people commenting on his feet considering he only had two large toes that acted quite a bit like thumbs, so he was prepared to tell him that it was a birth defect, but he never asked. Instead, he said, "There better be underwear underneath that shirt, Zim."

Zim raised an antennae and an eyebrow. "Why would there not be?"

Professor Membrane just sighed, having his answer. He said, "Just don't bother me right now."

"You know that whole 'you're not being a father' speech I gave you back in the hospital?"

"What did I just say to you?" Professor Membrane said in a low voice, glaring at Zim. The stress was evident on his face.

"Well you're doing a lousy job," Zim finished, leaning against one of the walls.

Professor Membrane's hand crumpled up one of the papers he was holding. "I've had a very rough day today," he said in an aggravated way.

"Dib is half blind and paralyzed on his right side," he said. "I think his qualifies as being worse."

"What do you want me to do? Let my assistants run the lab?" he snapped, turning around to Zim.

Zim pushed himself from the wall, feeling intimidated by how much larger Professor Membrane was compared to his small stature. "Maybe that's what you should do," he said. "I know you and Dib and don't exactly have good relations which each other, and I'll include Gaz in that too, but…you know what? Your skull is too thick that none of my words are going to get to you."

"Excuse me?"

"I've have this talk with you _twice_ now," Zim said. "And you're too stupid to listen to me. Normally I would say that Dib needs you, but I realized recently that that's not true. Dib doesn't need you, he needs _me_ since his own family isn't willing to give him a helping hand. I just wanted you to know that it's depressing it ever came to that in the first place."

"I appreciate the help you're giving my son, okay?" Professor Membrane said, then he gestured to the piles of paper he had. "But I have _this_ to take care of first. I'm on the verge of losing all of the government grants my labs get if I don't come up with someone new, and the deadline isn't going to wait to catch up with us."

Zim narrowed his eyes. "Your labs are more important than your kid?"

"No, but right now, they're pretty much at the top of my priority list," he said as he turned around and began to separate the papers. "If we lose that money, half the projects we're doing will have to be scrapped."

"How about you try to come up a way to give paralyzed people movement again," Zim said, venom in his voice. "Maybe that'll get the government's attention."

"I'm not a neurologist, so don't even suggest to me that I should do something I'm not capable of," he said.

"Maybe you should make robotic eyes so that blind people can see again," Zim said harshly.

"There're already plenty of organizations doing that. I need something innovated, something original," he replied.

"Here's an idea; how about you amaze your moronic government leaders by giving your son full sight and normal movement?!" Zim yelled. "You sniveling, disgusting, stupid human!"

Professor Membrane narrowed his eyes at him and opened his mouth to say something, but Zim bitch slapped him across the face before any words left his mouth. He looked surprised at first, holding a hand up to his face where two thin lines of blood seeped out from underneath his skin. Zim's claws had cut the surface just enough to draw out a small amount of that precious redness.

"It's amazing Dib isn't more ashamed than he is to call you his father," Zim said.

Professor Membrane looked furious rather than sobered up. "Get out of the house," he said, pointing to the door.

"Too late, I've basically moved in," Zim argued back. "In case you haven't noticed."

"I SAID GET OUT!"

"Will the two of you stop fighting? It's giving me a headache," Dib said from the top of the stairs, looking down at the two of them.

Zim looked up at Dib, blinking. He had managed to get himself out of bed and had hopped down the hallway without Zim's help. He looked like he was contemplating going down the stairs if the argument escalated.

Dib's presence seemed to have gotten Professor Membrane's attention more than Zim slapping him. Perhaps all he had to do was look at his pale skinned child who had dark bags underneath his eyes. Maybe he just needed to take a look at the kid who dragged one of his legs behind him and stood with a slouch and a face that was half emotionless from paralysis, half full of feeling. He just needed a reminder of the condition Dib was in.

Professor Membrane calmed down. "You should be in bed."

Dib glanced at him before looking at Zim. "Are you coming back to bed?"

Zim nodded and headed for the stairs. "Yeah, I'm coming."

"No, I told you to leave, Zim," the father said. "You aren't welcomed here for the rest of the night."

Zim just ignored him.

"Alright, I'm going to call your parents," he said as he picked up the phone.

"They won't answer," Zim said as he climbed the stairs.

"And why's that?"

"Because I have no parents," Zim told him. He linked his arm with Dib's and started to help him back to his room.

The scientist was quiet for a second. "I thought – I thought you did, Zim. You said they wouldn't care if you stayed over here."

"They died when I was ten," Zim lied. "They left me the house and their savings in their will. I live alone."

Professor Membrane put the phone down when he heard that. He felt like a jackass.

Zim brought Dib over to the bed. "You didn't have to start a fight with him you know," Dib said.

"Hey, he started it," Zim said as he laid down next to Dib. "Also the boxers I borrowed from you are pretty short."

"You didn't have to continue the argument, or provoke it," Dib said. "You should have just…I don't know…let it be. Should've left it alone."

Zim's antennae raised and he lifted his torso up with his arms, looking down at Dib. He reminded him of a cobra for a moment. "Left it alone? Dib-stink, that isn't something you just leave alone. He isn't doing anything for you."

"He doesn't have to," Dib said, looking at him with his eyes.

Zim just furrowed his brow and twitched his right antennae. He couldn't figure out why, but he felt a little angered that Dib wasn't thanking him for trying to get his parent more involved. Something stung and he couldn't figure out why. "Why not?" he said. "Human parents are supposed to help their offspring, are they? I'm trying to get him to help you. You should be happy."

"I am happy," Dib said. "I don't need Dad to help me because you're doing a wonderful job. You're more dedicated than he ever would be, and, well…that's good enough for me." He gave Zim a warm smile.

The furrow left Zim's brow and his expression softened considerably. That stinging feeling left him and he relaxed. "Zim makes you happy?"

"Of course you do," Dib said as he rolled onto his side and reached a hand up, gently grabbing onto one of Zim's black antennas. He stroked it carefully and Zim's eyes rolled up to the back of his head, his whole body relaxing completely. His head fell down against the pillow like the feeling was incapacitating him.

Dib chuckled. "Found your weak spot," he said, gliding his fingers across the very tip.

Zim shivered in pleasure and closed his eyes. "Don't you dare stop that, Dib-worm," he said. He emitted a noise that sounded like the soft purring of a cat.

"I won't," Dib said. "You always make me happy, Zim."

Zim smiled but didn't say anything, appearing to be under something akin to a spell. He opened eyes and put a hand on the side of Dib's face, touching his earrings lightly. "Zim loves it when he makes Dib happy," he said, feeling the cold metal of the various rings and studs.

Dib smiled. "Dib loves it too."

* * *

**Man, Zim must really like getting into fights with Professor Membrane. Oh such fun conflict is in stories.**


	16. Fix Him

The cafeteria had a quiet buzz of voices in it as Zim tried to get Dib's hand to work enough so it could properly hold a spoon, but the fingers just wouldn't comply. They both looked equally frustrated.

"Fucking neurological conditions…" Dib mumbled.

"Stupid lack of human medical technology…" Zim muttered back.

They were the only ones sitting at their table. Zim recalled the times when he used to have a whole table to himself and he would watch Dib, who was also totally isolated in his own little corner of solitude. Nobody had ever been willing to sit down with either of them. But, now that they were together, they only had to ignore the odd looks and side comments people made about them.

Eventually, they both gave up. Zim was too terrified to eat the school food anymore after an incident when he decided to try a small bite of chicken, just to test it out. He wound up spending twenty minutes hurling into a toilet as his body rejected the substance. As a substitute, he had a bag filled with grapes and strawberries, seemingly to be one of the few foods that his body could handle. They had their sugars, their vitamins, their uncontaminated water, and at least some sustenance to them. Zim just had to make sure he grabbed the organic fruit that didn't have a single trace of pesticide in it.

Dib resorted to using his left hand so he could eat without difficulty. He looked at Zim's lunch and said, "We need to find some new food for you."

"Well your fruits don't make my stomach implode and your vegetables are normally okay," Zim said. "Except for peas. Ohhhh how painful they are…"

"You might be able to handle carbohydrates," Dib said. "You know, pasta and bread and stuff."

Zim held up a small, red grape and examined it. "I'm always craving sweet things," he said. "And salt. I always feel like I have to eat things with sugar and salt."

Dib looked him over. "If that's what you're craving, then that's what you need," he said. "Do Irkens need more sugar or something to function?"

Zim ate the grape and said, "Sugar's generally bad for humans, but it's healthy for Irkens. It acts like how iron does with human bodies; our blood needs it for the exchange of oxygen, blah blah blah. Salt's just used for all sorts of things. I guess our bodies just use it differently. The only issue is that a lot of your earth-sugar-food has chemicals in it that I can't eat."

"Well we'll get you brown sugar," Dib said. "Organic, of course. That should help. We'll figure something out, honey."

Zim looked up at him and smiled. "Honey?"

Dib took another bite of his food. "It's a pet name people give to others they like," he said. "Same thing with 'sweetie.' It just means I like you."

Zim's smile just widened and he gently placed his hand on Dib's. "I'd kiss you right now, but we're in the middle of school," he said.

Dib felt his heart leap a little in his chest. It was amazing how pleasurable a simple touch on the hand was when it came from Zim. He still got butterflies in his stomach whenever he thought of pressing his lips against the other's. "Same here," he said. "But nobody knows about this, and nobody has to."

Zim shifted himself a little so that he was facing Dib. "You do know that if anybody gave you a problem, Zim wouldn't hesitate to bash their head in with a frying pan, right?"

Dib laughed and nodded his head, then he pushed his glasses up a little higher. "Yeah, I know," he said. "It's just that I've been bullied too much already. I don't want to give them another reason to go after us."

"Us? Dib-honey, you don't have to worry about Zim," the alien said. "Only worry about yourself, for I will liquefy the organs of any insolent fools stupid enough to mess with me, or you."

The human looked down at his food and smiled at the name. "I still don't want you to have to deal with it," he said. "I used to pretend that the stuff they said or did to me didn't hurt me, but it always did. I got immune to it after a while, but I just don't want you even being subjected to the same type of stuff."

"You, my love, are a better person than everybody thinks you are," Zim said, wrapping his fingers around Dib's hand. "And your intelligence is superior to these worm babies."

"…Do you want to go out tonight? On a date?" Dib asked him. "Just you and me somewhere?"

Zim's antennae wiggled a little underneath his wig, like he was trying to get them under control from excitement, or something of the equivalent. "The Dib should be honored that Zim will say yes," he said, releasing Dib's hand so that nobody would get suspicious. "Where do you want to go?"

"I feel like getting another piercing," Dib said, touching one of his multiple black earrings. He had six piercing, three on each ear. "We could go to the mall, go get lunch afterwards."

"The Zim approves," the alien said. At that moment, he just wanted to wrap his arms around his human and snuggle him, but he knew Dib didn't want the public ridicule. Zim honestly didn't care if somebody called him a derogatory term; he could say worse things in his mother tongue. Hell, they even had specific words for things that were entire phrases in English. Not wanting to attract unwanted attention, he refrained from cuddling Dib.

* * *

Zim hated malls. The noises mixed with the smells of purely human activity disgusted him, but, he found that he didn't feel the same once they stepped inside of a sleek, modern piercing store. It smelled different and was cool inside, and most of all, it wasn't very loud.

Zim had switched up his outfit again by wearing a purple-pink hoodie, but he kept the black pants and boots on. It made him look like he weighed a little more than he actually did, which was something that he had been struggling with recently. He just couldn't gain weight from this earth food. The fact that he was underweight made him very susceptible to getting cold, and being as small as he was never helped him much in that area of his life.

Zim used to wonder why humans were always so attracted to the shiny metals of jewelry, but he found that more than one of the items on display were catching his attention. His eyes picked up different spectrums of light than what humans could, so some of the precious stones looked absolutely dazzling to him. A diamond looked like it was giving off an aura of rainbows for him.

Dib stood up from the wheelchair, deciding that he needed to at least stretch out the bad leg and exercise it a little. Figuring no one was going to steal a wheelchair, Zim left it in the corner, linking his arm with Dib for support.

Dib seemed to be naturally attracted to the black earrings, so Zim helped him over to one of the displays. "I have a feeling your favorite color's black," he commented. He eyed two that were in the shapes of Chinese dragons and wondered what types of creatures they were supposed to resemble.

"Actually, my favorite color's blue," Dib said, leaning into Zim.

Zim released his hold on Dib and instead wrapped his arm around the human's chest. "Then you must have an affinity for black," he said, rubbing his thumb against Dib's side.

"Correct," he said.

"And you have an affinity for these strange earth ornaments," Zim said. "But it's pretty."

"What, me or the earrings?" He smirked.

"Both, but dominantly you," Zim said. He kissed the side of his face, then pointed to a pair of black loop rings. "I like those ones."

Dib looked elated from the kiss. "I was just thinking that," he said.

One of the sales associates approached them and Dib pointed out the ones he was interested in. Having a total of eight ear piercings seemed like a lot to Zim, but he didn't care. He thought they were quite attractive on his human.

It literally took only ten minutes for the piercings to be put it, and Zim was alarmed when he started bleeding quite a bit, but Dib just laughed and assured him that he was alright. It was normal. Zim still didn't like seeing him stabbed in the ears, and he inadvertently made that very obvious, but he didn't say much about it and just went along with what they were doing. After all, Dib really seemed to actually care about how he looked, considering he shaved just about every day.

While Dib paid, Zim went back to retrieve the wheelchair, only to blink when he saw that it was gone. He looked around himself, seeming confused. "Where'd the chair go…?"

Dib looked over his shoulder. "Is there a problem?" he called as the lady handed him the receipt. His left ear was throbbing, but he ignored it.

"Uh…well, the wheelchair's gone," Zim said in his high-pitched voice. "Wonderful, just great."

"Well I'm sure we can get another one," Dib said, hobbling over to him. "Maybe security saw it and thought it was theirs."

Zim muttered, "Stupid earth pig weasels…alright, let's go check there."

Zim helped him walk down the hallway strewn with stores on either side, but the further they went, the slower Dib moved as he became physically tired. It took forever to get to one of the security offices.

"Can we stop for a second?" Dib asked, leaning his back against the wall. The hallway was empty and bare, lit only by dim fluorescent lights. "This is harder than it looks."

"I know it is," Zim said, eyeing the door that had "security" painted on the front. There was no way Dib was going to be able to walk the entire way back home, even with his help. "You wait here, okay? I'll be right back."

Dib nodded, realizing that he was feeling a deep sense of satisfaction for the moment. Nobody had ever made him feel like this before, not before Zim came along, nor had anybody been so dedicated in giving him a helping hand. For once, he could trust someone, and for once, he had someone who wasn't going to hurt him.

He was too lost in his own little world of genuine happiness that he didn't notice an old enemy of his, the boy who had bullied him on and off throughout the years; Torque Smacky. It wasn't until he roughly shoved Dib did he realize he was there.

Dib looked up and caught his balance when he grabbed onto the top of a stray barrel, being met with the cruel smile from the boy. "Hey schizo," he said. "Where's your boyfriend?"

Dib blinked, mouth opening a little. He reassured himself that Zim would return soon, told himself that he had to be confident.

"Come on Dib, you're never speechless," Torque said, crossing his arms as he leaned against the wall next to him. "I saw you holding hands with that fag earlier today at lunch. I never pictured you getting the hots for him."

"Go away," Dib said as he started to limp to the other end of the hallway.

Torque grabbed onto the back of Dib's trench coat and pulled him back. "You aren't going anywhere unless I tell you to, cripple," he said. His breathed smelled like he hadn't brushed his teeth in weeks.

Dib violently shoved Torque's arm away. "I said go away," he said sternly. "I'm tired of your shit, Torque. Go take it to another person."

That sinister smile disappeared and his jaw was set firm.

It only took a second for Torque to punch him straight on the side of the face. Dib stumbled backwards and Torque grabbed onto the cloth on his chest, pulling him forward. "Faggot," he said, smirking again. "You're nothing but an emo, psychotic, anorexic faggot."

He threw Dib to the ground. Dib let out a sound of utter fear, trying his best to scurry away with his limited movement, dragging the other half of his body behind him while the rest of him frantically moved.

Torque grabbed onto one of his ankles and started to drag Dib down the hallway towards the fire exit, knowing that the sheltered alleyway would give him enough privacy to beat the living shit out of him. Dib thrashed his leg to try to get free, his nails trying to dig into the floor like it would save him. Terrified, he let out a hoarse cry, one full of pure, utter fear. "ZIM!" he screeched. "HELP ME! _ZIM_!"

Torque dragged Dib out of the fire exit and into the dirty, sheltered alleyway littered with trash. He let go of Dib's leg and it fell to the ground, then Dib quickly turned around onto his back and tried to scramble away from him. He was shaking, terrified.

"Remember when you threw that acid into my face in the janitor's closet?" Torque said in a low voice, approaching Dib in a highly threatening way. His shoulders were set square, body huge compared to Dib's. "'Cause I sure do." His face scowled, the slight scar still evident where Dib had burned it in a panic to defend himself.

"Leave me alone just leave me alone please leave me alone oh god-" Dib said frantically, reaching for anything he could use as a weapon.

"I'm so happy you're a cripple now," Torque said as he raised a foot and kicked Dib in the ribs. "You wanna know what I'm going to do to you since you fucked up my face? I'm going to break your good leg, then I'm going to smash your good hand with a brick before I throw you into the dumpster like the piece of psychotic shit you are."

Dib dragged himself backwards, hyperventilating quickly as his heart thundered loudly in his ears. He began sweating and raised his left leg like he was getting ready to kick Torque with it.

"Nobody's coming for you," Torque said as he picked up a crowbar from the ground. "Nobody cares about you, Dib. Once I beat the living shit out of you, I'm gonna do the same to your boyfriend." He raised the crowbar and slammed it into Dib's leg, letting out a sickening sound of metal hitting flesh.

Dib squealed, saying quick, frantic pleas as Torque began beating him with the crowbar. He tried kicking him, but it was nothing, not even with the adrenaline coursing through every one of his blood vessels. Scared for his life, he didn't know what else to do but scream. So he did. He screamed like bloody murder, letting out soul ripping yells in the hopes that Zim would hear him.

He felt blinded by the pain as the crowbar hit him repeatedly, then he felt Torque grabbed onto his left leg. He tried so hard to protect himself, desperate to save his limb, but Torque was simply a million times stronger than he was. The kid was like a brick wall.

Torque gave a malevolent smirk. "I'm going to shatter this at the knee," he proclaimed. "And you're going to feel me do it. I'll fuck it up so much, you'll never be able to walk again, faggot."

Dib's stomach clenched and twisted in fear. Torque raised the crowbar to break his knee in half, but just before he brought it down, two spikes suddenly shot through Torque's shoulders from behind.

Torque's expression immediately changed to one of confusion. He dropped the crowbar and it clanged loudly against the asphalt ground. He looked at one of the blood-covered spikes protruding from his shoulder for a second like he was trying to figure out what it was, then he was suddenly very roughly yanked up high into the air. The two metallic spikes slid out of his body when he was propelled forward, then he fell down hard onto the ground.

Zim was suspended in the air on his spider legs, then he moved over Dib in a defensive stance and put his feet on the ground, standing between him and Torque. The look on his face was murderous and enraged, his slouched and tensed stance making him look like he was about to lunge at the other kid and shred him into pieces like a meat grinder.

Zim curled up his spider legs by his side, looking like an animal. He opened his mouth and let a horrific, inhuman shriek. It didn't even sound like something that would come from an animal or an alien. It was high pitched and sounded demonic, the bone-chilling sound forcing both Dib and Torque to cover their ears. Zim raised two of his spider legs and brought them down on Torque like a tarantula attacking prey, stabbing him through both of his calves.

Torque screamed and tried to crawl away from Zim as the alien dragged him within reaching distance. Zim then lifted him into the air, watching as he flailed, hanging upside down in the air as blood poured out from his legs. He threw Torque and smashed him against the wall like he was a ragdoll, then he screeched once more at him as he slammed him into the ground. He moved so that he was standing over Torque, the kid screaming like hell as Zim started to tear him apart into pieces with the sharp points of the legs, splattering deep, crimson blood against the alleyway.

Dib was dumbstruck as he watched Zim destroy Torque. He was trying to figure out if this was real or not. Maybe it was just a nightmare, but no. He realized that Zim was killing Torque. He was going to murder him.

"Zim…stop…" he said weakly, but the alien didn't hear him. "Zim…ZIM, STOP! STOP IT!"

The alien had one of the sharp points above Torque's neck, then he ceased moving altogether. He turned around and looked at Dib, that animalistic, crazed look still on his face.

Dib had tears in his eyes. He was trembling like a frightened puppy, but regardless of it, he said, "Just stop, Zim…d-d-don't kill him…"

Zim took a step away from Torque. The kid curled up and started to inch away from Zim, bleeding profusely all across from the huge lacerations and stabbings now covering his body. He was alive and breathing, but had stopped screaming.

"Dib-honey…" Zim said, retracting the legs into his PAK. He was soaked with blood, redness splashed across his face. He walked over to his human and knelt down beside him. "Are you broken…?"

Dib shook his head. "I'm alright…don't let Torque die…"

"But he hurt you," Zim said, putting a hand on Dib's side where he had been struck. His touch was tender, like he was afraid of hurting him. He seemed so psychotic. "Zim wants to help you…"

"I'm okay, I swear…" Dib breathed his out. His entire body hurt. He looked at Torque and said, "You can't let him die. The police'll find you, take you away." He set his head against the ground, tired of having to keep it up. The pavement felt rough and cold against his cheek. "Don't let him bleed out, Zim. Go…go fix him."

Zim listened like an obedient dog and walked over to Torque. The kid said "no no no" repeatedly in a quiet voice, over and over again until Zim started to stop the bleeding in the more important areas of his body. He hadn't hit any veins or arteries, but he was losing blood fast.

Dib closed his eyes, feeling something sticking against his face. He touched it and realized it was Torque's blood. He stomach lurched and he felt like he was going to puke, frenziedly trying to wipe the bodily substance off of him.

This wasn't supposed to happen. None of it was.

Zim stopped the majority of the Torque's bleeding, then he decided to leave the human to fend for himself, deeming him unworthy of such help once he was sure he'd survive. He was more concerned about Dib. His sweet, sweet little flower was hurt. All he did was leave for a second and then this happened. He bent down and wrapped his arms around Dib, carrying him bridal style as he held him close to his chest. "Let's go home," Zim said as he turned around and walked away from Torque, using his spider legs to crawl up the side of the wall.

The kid would live, but he would never mess with them again.

"Where were the security officers…?" Dib asked as they came out onto the roof.

"They weren't there," Zim said. His mechanical legs made soft electrical noises. "I went into the back to find them, but they were gone. That's why I didn't hear you at first…I'm so sorry, Dib-pet. Torque must've taken the wheelchair and set this up…"

Dib just took in a pained breath. "It's okay," he said. "It's not your fault…let's just go home…"


	17. He's Been Needing Someone

Zim thought it was amazing that Dib never cried over being treated like this from others. Instead he cried from personal frustration as a way to relieve stress, not from being physically assaulted in an alleyway with a crowbar. By the time Zim got him home and had mended his wounds, Dib had calmed down and seemed to be more relieved that he was away from danger than upset about being attacked. He was a little traumatized, but Dib promised that it wouldn't be permanent, and would probably go away within the next week.

He had cleaned the both of them of blood before Gaz came home and piled their soiled clothes up in the corner, intending on washing them later. The crimson on them was starting to turn a murky, disgusting brown color.

"I don't understand why you humans act like this," Zim said in an annoyed way, sorting out the medical supplies he had used, organizing everything so that he could put them away with ease. "Irkens aren't self-destructive like that. We war against other races, not ourselves. Even then, Irkens try not to kill too many members of the enemy…granted, it's so that there's a larger slave labor force, but still."

"Yeah, well, these are humans," Dib said. "They have no one to war against other than themselves."

"But still…it's ridiculous," Zim said, putting the med kit away. "I'm getting into pajamas. I'm tired of wearing this hoodie."

"But it looks good on you," Dib said, smirking a little as he shifted in his bed.

"Even though it has blood stains?" Zim asked.

"Of course."

"Then thank you, human-stink."

He opened Dib's closet and took out a larger shirt that was in the very back, probably forgotten about long ago. He grabbed it and pulled it out, holding it up against himself. It went down to just below his waist, which, in his ruby red eyes, was long enough. He lifted the hoodie up over his head and put the shirt on, then he kicked his boots, pants, and gloves off with his back to Dib. When he turned around and saw the human staring at him, he simply asked, "…What?"

"I just wasn't expecting you to strip down in front of me," Dib said. "Please do it again in the future."

Zim just rolled his eyes. The black underwear he was wearing wasn't entirely covered by the shirt, which only tortured Dib.

"So what'd you want for dinner, Dib-honey?" Zim asked as he put his clothes in the corner.

Dib almost said "you," but then he realized that Zim probably wouldn't understand it, so he said, "Anything without animal products."

"So pasta?" Zim asked.

"Sounds good enough for me," Dib said. Several parts of his body felt tender, but he wasn't in the mood to complain about it. "That's something Gaz'll actually eat, too."

"I'll be right back," Zim said, turning around to leave. The collar of the shirt was, yet again, too large for him and slid off to the left too much, exposing his shoulder once more. The alien didn't seem to mind the look all that much, for he could feel Dib's eyes on his back as he left.

Zim's bare feet padded quietly against the stairs as he descended them. He saw Gaz in the corner struggling over a paper, her gaming console still a bulge in her pocket. She looked intensely frustrated, which got Zim curious. "What're you doing?"

"Homework," she grumbled. She was leaning forward on her fist, but her hand was grasping her hair tightly, almost like she was going to yank it out of her scalp. "I'm failing math. I have to do this, but it doesn't make any sense…none of it!"

Zim walked over to her. She glanced at him, then did a double-take and said, "What the hell are you wearing?"

"Don't ask, it's your brother's shirt," he said.

"At least put some pants on."

"I didn't feel like wearing any," he said, leaning onto the table with his hands as his eyes scanned the paper.

"You look like a girl, especially with that underwear."

"Doesn't matter to me," Zim said, crossing one leg over the other. He read the algebraic problem she was stuck on for approximately five seconds before he said, "X equals seventeen."

Gaz blinked, looking down at her paper. She scribbled in the answer. "How'd you get that so fast?"

Zim pointed at a section of the problem and said, "You divide both sides by Y, then you simplify the side that's left to get the answer for X. It looks like that's all you have to do for the rest of the problems." He stood back up, straightened his posture, and headed into the kitchen. "Also, all your other answers are wrong, so you might want to redo them."

Gaz looked confused for a second, then she looked back at her paper, took his advice, and started to fix her mistakes.

Zim began cooking the pasta in the kitchen by himself, boiling the water first before he poured in the dried noodles. He looked bored as he stirred them occasionally, then he perked his head up when he heard Gaz ask, "Are you living with us now? Permanently?"

He looked back at her, then shrugged his shoulders. "For the moment, I guess so," he said. "I mean, there isn't anybody around to look after you two. Do you want butter on your pasta? I know Dib doesn't, but I'm okay with making you a separate bowl."

"Sure…" Gaz said. "Are you up to something?"

Zim shook his head. "No, why?"

"This isn't like you," Gaz said. "What happened to you wanting to take over the world?"

"Mm…good question. I don't want the world anymore."

"What? Why? That was all you wanted before," Gaz said.

"I wasn't sent here to take over the planet in the first place," Zim said. "I was sent here in exile. It's a long story so I'll tell you it later. But I wouldn't really gain anything from taking this mud ball over, so what's the point?"

"Then why are you caring about me all of a sudden?" Gaz asked. "It's not like I'm nice to you or anything."

Zim thought for a second. "I love your brother, Gaz," he said. "And you're his little sister. I gotta be willing to help you out, too." The alien poured the pasta out into the strainer, being careful not to get too close to the hot steam.

"So have you kissed him yet?"

"The Dib? Many times," Zim said. "Oh, such kissing we've had."

"Good. He's been needing a boyfriend for a long time…and a life."

Zim finished with the dinner and gave Gaz her own bowl, then he headed up the stairs to his human.

Zim's antennae twitched a little as he sat down beside Dib. They ate in an awkward silence until Zim mentioned something about how he had forgotten all about his leaders in the past months, which only led into a lengthy conversation about the social hierarchy of his society. The chatting was nice, but even though Dib seemed fully intrigued by it, Zim was just bored. He didn't want to think about Irk. Sometimes he yearned for it, but something inside of him told him that he'd be better off just forgetting it. He was banished, exiled, forgotten. Unwanted.

Zim put the bowls on the end table near the bed and laid down beside Dib. "Enjoy the bowl of stuff?" he asked.

"Indeed I did," Dib said, smiling when Zim put his hands behind his head. The alien took in a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh, staring at the ceiling before he closed his eyes.

Dib moved so that he was on his side, then he gently placed his hand on Zim's belly and kissed the side of his face. One of Zim's antennae brushed by Dib's head like it was checking him out, then the alien turned his head and placed a kiss on his lips.

Oh, how enjoyable that was. One kiss just lit up everything for Dib. He leaned forward a little and put his hand on the side of Zim's face, gently making out with him as it gradually became more and more passionate with every passing second.

Dib moved his hand down Zim's slender body slowly, resting it on the alien's side. He could feel his heart pick up its pace in his chest, his stomach fluttering like butterflies were trapped inside. His kissing became more forceful and he pushed Zim down into the bed, putting more of his weight onto him.

It was then that he realized that, for the first time, he was feeling a legitimate sensation of lust. He wanted to keep making out with him, so he did, quickly become more intense as his hormones went haywire. Zim wrapped his arms around his human's torso in a gentle hug, then Dib had to break the kiss in order to breathe.

He felt nervous, but he grinned widely at Zim—who was quite literally his hero—regardless. Lust was a strange thing for him to feel. Sex was something he hardly ever thought of, but now, at the moment, it was on his mind, and he could feel his blood rushing to his legs because of it. He wanted the other so badly, wanted to get on top of him, wanted to mate with him. He planted a small kiss on Zim's neck as he moved his hand down to his hip, wrapping his fingers around the edge of his underwear until—

That was when Zim pushed him away, sitting upright to stop him. He looked a little alarmed. "What are you thinking about, human?" he asked.

"I-I-I…shit, I'm sorry," he said, putting a hand over his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I just…never mind. I'm sorry."

Zim gave him an incredulous look, then he placed his bare palm against Dib's arm, gliding the fingers over the skin. He tasted stronger than he usually did, granted he rarely touched Dib without his gloves on, but still. He realized that it was hormones being released in Dib's body and he pulled his hand away. "It's alright, Dib-human," he said, laying back down. "Don't be sorry. The Zim is flattered."

"I just embarrassed myself…" Dib said, hiding his face into the pillow. "I'm so sorry."

Zim just smiled a little. "You humans and your apologies. Close your eyes and get some rest. We've got school tomorrow."


	18. He Deserved It

Torque wasn't in the school the next day, or the next, or even the one after that. It wasn't until that following Monday did he make an appearance with serious scars and torn muscles still wrapped up in bandages. Rather than being sympathetic, Zim noted how the other teenagers were on him like vultures, laughing at him and already calling him names.

"I'm not shitting you!" Zim heard Torque say hysterically to a fellow student. "That green freak, he has these legs that come out of his back, and he fucking attacked me with them! He's not a human, he's a…an ALIEN!"

"Alright, now you're just sounding like Dib," a girl said. Everyone then started to ignore Torque.

"Why aren't you listening to me?! That kid's a freak! I swear, he did this to me, I swear…why isn't anybody believing me…?"

Zim smirked. Served him right. Dib had spent a lifetime telling others the truth but being told that he was crazy. Now it was Torque's turn, and everyone was just going to turn a blind eye to him.

When he walked by Torque just to torment him, the kid started to frantically point at him in an accusing way. "SEE?! HE ISN'T A PERSON! HE'S AN ALIEN!"

Zim just looked at him, cruel amusement in his eyes as he passed him and went down a different hall. Inferior human. He had to get Dib from the nurse's office.

He stepped inside and saw Dib in all his dark glory, standing with equal weight on both legs for the first time in what felt like forever. He was getting stronger, and though he couldn't quite walk yet, he could at least stand without the other leg collapsing.

He turned his head around to Zim when he heard him enter and smiled. His black hair was sleeked back to perfection, his studs and black piercings glinting a little in the fluorescent light hitting them. His amber eye looked extraordinarily bright this day from the black eyeliner he had put on, not seeming to give a single care about how other people thought he looked. His blind eye, however, had started to change color slightly, and was slowly becoming duller with every passing month. He still had his trademarked trench coat and boots on, blue shirt with a neutral smiley face still covering his chest. His smirk seemed to be plastered to his face. "Hey," he said.

Zim gave a wave of his hand in salutation. "Earthling," he said, nodding to him.

Dib held a wooden cane in his hand. Professor Membrane had left Zim a handful of cash one night to get it for him, and lately, Dib had been using it everywhere he went. He hated the wheelchair, said it made him feel helpless, so the cane quickly became his most useful tool other than Zim.

He leaned his weight against it as he limped over to Zim. "Got your meds?" Zim asked.

"As always," Dib said. "The headaches are finally going away."

"Want me to take your arm?"

"Nah, I'm good," Dib said, making his own way over to the door.

Zim smiled. He was so glad that his movement was increasing day by day. The next step was going to get him to reclaim his ability to go up and down stairs without assistance. He held the door open for Dib, sticking close to his side.

"Did you see Torque earlier?" Zim asked, malevolent smile on his face. "That pig smelly's getting no good attention from anyone. He keeps saying I'm an alien but nobody's listening to him, heh…little bitch deserves it."

Dib gave him a look, though it was more contemplative and unamused than purely negative. "That isn't really something to be happy about, Zim."

Zim looked up at him. "What do you mean? He was going to break your leg in half, human. He deserves to be…to be bullied."

Dib just shrugged.

The alien blinked, feeling awkward in the silence that ensued. "Do you not agree?"

"Not really…"

"Dib, he's been bullying you since elementary school," Zim said, a scowl on his face. "And you're not happy that he's covered in bandages being laughed at by others?"

"That's just not something you get happy about," Dib said. "That's been happening to me my whole life. I'm not going to be happy if somebody else is going through it."

"But…he bullied you!" Zim said, completely not understanding. This Dib thing, why was he not happy that the other children were laughing at Torque and calling him names? The Dib should be overjoyed that his bully was feeling pain, should be ecstatic that the other was getting his karma coming back to him. But instead he wasn't. He wasn't happy.

"I think he's just insecure," Dib said. "Granted, I'm insecure too, but at least I don't take it out on other people."

"Insecure? About what?" Zim asked. He sounded a little aggravated.

"Calm down, Zim," Dib said, glancing at him. "I'm insecure about…a lot of things. Me being underweight, my disability, my half-blindness, Dad always being gone, being gay, everything. But you always make everything better, so it isn't that bad for me."

Zim crossed his arms over his chest, not seeming to hear the compliment. He just didn't understand why he wasn't happy about Torque being ridiculed and getting what he, in Zim's mind, rightfully deserves. "And this Torque child, what do you think he's insecure about?"

"From what I've heard, his parents don't exactly treat him well," Dib said. "He doesn't come from a good family."

"Well you don't either."

"Yes, but I don't take it out on other people," Dib said. "I had my own ways of dealing with it. Besides, now I have you, so Dad always being away and Mom being gone doesn't hurt as much as it used to. I don't think Torque has anyone so he tries to put others lower than himself to make himself feel better."

"And that's reason to give him sympathy?"

"No, it's reason to understand that he's just a person," Dib said. "Nothing more, nothing less."

Zim thought about that. It was so different from the ideology that he was used to, and he didn't like it. Back on Irk, defeating an enemy was a triumph to be celebrated. Zim laughed at his enemies being defeated. He was happy that Torque was going to be tormented and deemed insane by the vast majority of the population because he, Zim, had won the fight. Zim had protected his mate. The assailer was going to pay the price he deserved, and Zim was supposed to be happy that that was going to happen, right?

But no, it wasn't the same without Dib's approval. This pacifistic approach that human had to this circumstance was infuriating. Dib didn't laugh or smile at Torque being hurt, even though he had once thrown acid in his face. But then Zim remembered that Dib only did that as a last resort because he was scared and needed to protect himself. Dib was the exact opposite of Torque; skinny, pale, intelligent, and, for the most part, non-aggressive. He should expect him to react different to this than most people.

But still, Zim didn't like it. He wanted to laugh and ridicule Torque, and he wanted Dib to do that, too. He wanted to be a vulture. But the human wasn't going to. He just felt…frustrated. At the same time, Zim hated how everybody had given Dib strange looks when they suddenly became friends. He hated the comments they made when they learned that Dib was half-paralyzed, but at the same time, he knew that they weren't worth his attention. It's like they had attacked him with their stares, their remarks, their snickers…and now he wanted to do it to someone else. He was confused, wanting one thing but feeling as if he should do another.

"Dib-human, why'd you stop me from killing Torque?" Zim asked, one hand hanging onto the strap of his backpack.

Dib looked at him. "Why? Because killing people isn't the answer."

"But he was going to break your leg and your hand," Zim said.

"Zim, you just have to understand that he's hurting a lot on the inside," Dib said. "Do I disagree with the stuff he does? Yes, I do, but you know what? He'll either have an epiphany sometime soon in his life and change his ways or he'll die of a drug overdose. Kids like that experiment with substances as a way of trying to medicate themselves. If he doesn't kill himself with that, then he'll probably just wind up getting arrested somewhere down the road. Either way, he won't be our problem anymore if we just stay away from him. I stopped you because I don't want you having the guilt of murdering someone for the rest of your life. Besides, there'd be a whole police investigation and you'd be blamed, and if they can't prove that it was self-defense, then you'd be taken away. They'd find out what you really are and put you on an autopsy table, and do I want that? No, I don't. Leaving him be was the easiest way out."

Zim just blinked. Philosophical Dib was being philosophical. "That still doesn't make any sense," he said.

"Which part?"

"The whole thing," Zim said. "Irkens are happy when they defeat their enemies."

"Humans are too," Dib said.

"But you are human."

"I know." Dib opened the door to their classroom and let Zim in first.

Zim stepped inside. "So you're just different from everyone, is that it?"

"I've always been different from everyone," Dib said. "Man, there really mustn't be much diversity among Irkens thoughts."

Zim glared at him. "Are you hinting that I'm less superior?"

Dib just gave him a funny look. "No, I never said that, Zim. Don't get so worked up over nothing."

Zim sighed. He was right. He was getting upset at nothing. He sat down beside his human, watching the teacher as she prepared her lecture.

* * *

Zim felt incredibly stressed. He had his homework to do, he had to bring Dib to physical therapy, he needed to cook dinner, he had to do this, he had to do that. The list never ended. On top of that, he was notified that Gaz socked a kid in the mouth and had detention until four because of it. Zim argued with the guidance counselor for at least minutes in an attempt to move the detention to another day, but he was thick-headed and didn't understand how tight his own schedule was. He told him to tell Gaz that she'd have to walk home, but he wouldn't allow it, even though she often walked home alone anyways. This guy literally had no brain. Now Gaz's detention was extended until whenever Zim could collect her.

So, Zim brought Dib to the physical therapy session immediately after school and back home by four thirty. Gaz was going to be angry and sulky for the rest of the day, but Zim was stressed and pissed. The twelve-year-old girl could deal with it. This was her punishment, it was her fault…maybe. He hoped that she had a good reason for knocking a few of that kid's teeth out.

Zim looked tired as he walked into the detention room, glancing at the clock to see that it was five now. Gaz was the only one with in there with the school's resource officer half asleep in the corner. She had been banned from playing any of her video games and had finished her homework, meaning she had spent at least an hour just staring at the wall. The look she gave Zim was murderous. "You're late," she said.

"Oh don't you dare give me any of that crap," Zim said, gesturing for her to follow him with his index finger much like a disgruntled parent.

She grabbed her bag, glanced at the resource officer, stood, and followed Zim. "I can walk home by myself," she said.

"I know you can, but the school's stupid and wasn't going to let you leave unless someone came for you," Zim said. "Which means that my schedule's all screwed up now and I have a pile of homework to go through and no time to do it. I still have to buy us groceries. So don't you dare give me any crap about being 'late,' do you understand me?"

Gaz looked up at him, seeming surprised that his tone was so sharp. "But he started it," she said. "The kid I punched, I mean."

"I don't care."

"But it's not my fault!"

"You punched him Gaz, and these are the consequences of it. Accept it," Zim snapped as they left the building.

Gaz just crossed her arms. Yeah, she was going to be upset for the rest of the day.

"How's your math class?" Zim asked, deciding to tone down his voice. Yelling at her wasn't going to make anything better. Might as well change the subject and diffuse the mood.

"Still failing…" Gaz said.

"You'll get that grade up," Zim said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. A thought then occurred to him and he asked, "What'd that kid do that made you punch him?"

Gaz just went quiet and didn't look at him, like she didn't want to admit something.

Zim just raised a brow. "Well?"

"What's a lesbian?" she asked him.

Zim blinked. "It's a…a homosexual woman, why?"

"Because he called me one," Gaz said. "He said it like it's a bad thing, so I punched him. He said that because my brother's gay that that makes me a lesbian."

Zim furrowed his brow a little. "Well he doesn't know up from down if he thinks that makes you lesbian," he said. "There isn't anything wrong with being gay."

"I know there isn't," Gaz said, looking up at him. "But it's just that he said it like it's bad."

"Well he's a stupid pig," Zim said, looking forward. "You really didn't know what a lesbian was?"

"No…I've heard the word before, but I never knew what it meant…" Gaz mumbled.

"Just try to ignore him next time, okay?" Zim said, thinking of Dib. "If you stay away from him, he'll leave you alone after a while."

"But I wanna punch him again," Gaz said.

"Well don't."

They walked up to the front of the house and Zim stepped inside first. "Alright, now I'm making filthy earth macaroni for dinner so no buts or complaints about it, okay?"

"Fine…" Gaz said. Normally she would go straight to the living room, but instead, she climbed the stairs to her room. Zim caught a glanced of the look that was on her face and it was anything but the usual pissed off/annoyed-at-the-stupid-world look that she normally wore. This one was darker and, in a way, sad. She looked sad.

The house was abnormally quiet as he cooked in the kitchen. He knew Dib was doing his homework—hell, the kid was a sophomore in high school and already taking calculus. He couldn't afford to fall behind any more than he already had. It was Gaz that he was worrying about. He couldn't get the look she had on her face out of his mind.

He finished cooking their dinner and dished it out into separate bowls. He went up the stairs to tell them dinner was ready, but then he heard a soft sound coming from Gaz's room. He needed to check up on her.

Slowly, he creaked the door open and said, "Dib-sibling? Can I come in?"

"Mmm…" Gaz responded.

Zim stepped inside the incredibly dark room. Gaz was huddled in the corner of her bed, not playing any video games or reading or doing anything. She had her knees pulled up into her chest, her arms wrapped around them. He immediately knew that something was terribly wrong. He sat down on the bed cautiously, like he was afraid she'd lash out at him with claws like a cat. She had her face buried in her arms. "Gaz…? Come on, tell me what's wrong."

She just shook her head.

Zim raised a hand and hesitated for a second before he set it down on her arm in a comforting way. "It won't go away if you don't talk about it," he said.

"My stomach hurts…" she mumbled.

Zim blinked. "Is that it?"

"It's different," she said, raising her head. "It's lower. It hurts every time I breathe."

"Um…do you want a heating pad or something?" Zim offered.

Gaz just shook her head. "That won't help."

"So…that's all that's upsetting you?" Zim said. "If you got something else on your mind, you should tell someone."

Gaz just shrugged her shoulders. "There're just some kids at school that piss me off. It's nothing I can't handle." She pulled up her knees a little higher, a look of pain flashing on her face for just a second. It was physical pain.

"If you're being bullied, you need to tell someone," Zim said.

"I'm not being bullied," Gaz reassured as she stood up from the bed, heading over to the bathroom. "I'm fine, I swear."

Zim watched her as she closed the door. He sighed and ran his fingers through the black hair of his wig. Gaz was strong, and a very dark-minded individual. Her threats were usually idle, but he knew that she could take care of herself. He shouldn't be so concerned. She'd be okay.


	19. Little Sister

Zim was having an incredibly pleasurable dream that night. In his dream, it was just him and Dib in their bedroom, kissing on the bed with Zim straddling the other. He wasn't sure what they were doing, but it felt good when their hips touched, and the room felt hot. His eyes then shot open from the dream when he heard the door to their room open.

Tired, he lifted his head, his antenna moving about to listen to whoever it was. In the faint light, he could see the outline of Gaz standing in the room, shaking.

"Zim…?" she whispered very quietly, almost inaudibly.

The alien stirred, made sure that Dib was still asleep, and then stood up from the bed. He herded her out into the hallway and closed the door so they wouldn't wake the still-sleeping human.

Zim turned a light on and rubbed his eyes. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know," Gaz said. She looked terrified. "I think I need a doctor."

Zim opened his eyes and felt a sense of alarm growing in his gut. "Why?"

"Because my stomach's been hurting all day, and yesterday too, and I'm…I'm uh…" She held her hands nervously as she shivered. Hell, she looked like she was about to cry.

"Gaz, just tell me," Zim said. "I'm not gonna judge you."

"I'm bleeding," she said. "From…down _there_. And it won't stop, and I don't know why it won't stop."

Zim tilted his head. "From where, specifically…?"

Gaz just looked uncomfortable and exceedingly stressed out, then she lifted herself up onto her toes and whispered the answer into Zim's ear (which, as it turned out, was his antenna).

Zim just blinked and said, "Ohhhh…Gaz, don't worry about it."

"Don't worry?!" She said, raising her voice.

"Shhhh, you don't want to wake up your brother—"

"Zim, I don't know what's wrong!" she whisper-yelled. "I'm…it's scaring me!"

Zim grabbed onto her arms in a gentle way to calm her down and bent down a little so that he was eye-level with her. He said quietly, "It's okay, Gaz. It's just your first period. Every girl gets them."

"I don't know what that is…"

"It's um…it's normal," Zim said. "Have you ever had health class before?"

She shook her head. "That doesn't start until next year for us."

"Okay, um, well…a period just means that you're turning from a girl into a woman," Zim said, trying to keep her calm. "It's normal, happens once a month—"

"Once a _month_?" Gaz said. Her eyes were welling up a little. He had never seen her like this before. Usually she was incredibly antisocial and tried to ignore the world with her video games and, quite frankly, just didn't give a damn about the world, so it was unsettling to see her so frightened and worried.

"Let me explain okay? It's perfectly normal," Zim assured. "It's supposed to happen. It's uh…it's your uterus shedding its lining, okay? Your body's also releasing something called a uh…an egg. It's called ovulation. It causes cramps and might make you feel a little sick." He swallowed, feeling awkward and uncomfortable, but he had to put her mind at ease. She needed to know that she wasn't dying. Besides, she was only twelve. He was more surprised that she had no idea what it was considering the freaking third graders had a vague idea of what sex was, but then again, she was always ignoring everything. She was always engrossed in her digital hobby, and her grades showed that she didn't exactly like paying much attention in class, either.

"Okay…" Gaz said. Her worry was still there, but it wasn't to such a serious extent. She looked much more relaxed. "Why can't I stop it?"

"Well, you can't stop your heartbeat just by thinking of it, can you?" Zim reasoned. "It just happens."

"So how do we fix it?"

"We just gotta go along with it," he said. "We don't have any uh…feminine products in the bathroom, do we?"

"Like what?"

"Like…this is awkward…" Zim said, rubbing a hand across the back of his head. He stood up straight and released her arms. "What time is it?"

"Two in the morning."

"Alright, listen, I'll go run down to the pharmacy and pick something up to help, alright? That place is open twenty-four hours?"

Gaz nodded. "Yeah…Dib used to sneak out to it in the middle of the night back when he was eleven," she said. "It's always open."

"Those poor employees," Zim muttered as he pulled his black sweatpants up a little. He made a mental note to himself that he needed to get clothes for himself rather than constantly stealing Dib's. "Don't worry if you bleed on your clothes, okay? We'll just clean it later. Don't worry about anything." He turned around and started to head down the stairs. "I'll be back real quick."

"Okay…thanks, Zim…"

* * *

Forty-five minutes and an awkward conversation with a female nighttime worker and Zim finally got what he needed for the Dib-sibling. He had never felt so awkward in his entire life, not even when Dib almost had sex with him the week before. Granted, part of him was pretty happy that that skinny human felt close enough to him to do that strange mating ritual that his species always seemed to be doing, but still. It had also startled him. He wasn't ready for a thing like that, didn't even know how to do it. Daydreaming and actually _doing_ something are two different things.

Zim didn't have to worry about money; Professor Membrane left him plenty to take care of all three of them. It was the fact that he was green skinned, wearing a poorly kept-up wig with contact lenses, black pajamas with a white t-shirt of Jesus riding a dinosaur, with a bag of pads and tampons slung over his shoulder that he was worried about. At two in the morning, the only people on the streets were mainly crack whores and drug dealers. Zim knew he was weird enough to scare away anyone who wanted to give him trouble, but it was still unsettling. This was a city. Anything could happen.

Zim stepped inside the house. He felt chilled from the cold air and went back up the stairs, hearing Gaz in the bathroom. She was moaning in pain. Periods must have been agony.

"I'm back," Zim said in a tired voice, setting the bag on the counter. Gaz was sitting in the corner with her hand over her stomach, looking like she was about to throw up.

"I think I'm gonna be sick…" she mumbled.

Zim sighed and helped her over to the toilet. "Sweetie, don't be ashamed to be sick. I promise you that it'll pass."

Gaz nearly threw up a few times as Zim sorted out the whole plethora of things he had gotten. He had no idea what half of it was, so he just hoped that Gaz would be able to figure it out.

He knelt down by her side and put a hand on her back, gently rubbing her between the shoulder blades. "Nothing coming up?"

She shook her head and started trembling a little. "I don't…I don't think I should go to school tomorrow…"

Zim shook his head. "No, you can stay home." He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. They felt like they had sand in them.

He stood up and searched through the medicine cabinet. They had to have some type of pain killer in there, just something. He saw a bottle of naproxum sodium and read the label. Yep, it was perfect for a situation like this. He took a pill out, filled a glass of water, and said, "Whenever you feel like you can swallow something, take this. It's a pain killer. You gonna be okay by yourself?"

Gaz grimaced but nodded. "Yeah, I'll be fine…"

"Just get one of us if you need something," Zim said as he turned around.

He silently got back into Dib's bed, but he was already awake. "Is everything alright?" he asked.

Zim closed his eyes as he laid down, snuggling back up in his rightful place by the human's side. "It's fine. Gaz just started puberty, that's all."

Dib raised a brow.

"Her period," Zim cleared up. "She's having her first period. Now close that noise hole and sleep. I'm tired."

"Wait, did you go out and get her—"

"Yes human, I left and came back, but now I'm here and I want to sleep."

"Zim, you honestly didn't have to."

"Shut up," Zim muttered, already half asleep.

Dib sighed and wrapped an arm around him. "I used to think you were constantly evil, but you literally just blew your image, helping a girl with her first period."

Zim raised a fist and punched him in the shoulder, then he flipped over, put the pillow over his head, and groaned loudly. Dib just smiled and cuddled him. "You're more amazing than you think you are, honey."

"GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP."

Dib laughed, then he raised the pillow and whacked him with it. He only smiled in amusement and said, "Man Zim, didn't know you got mood swings so violently."

"IT'S CALLED GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP." He laid back down and pulled the pillow over his head.

"Love you, Zim."

"Shut up."

"And if I don't?"

"GO TO SLEEP."

"Who are you now, Jeff the Killer?"

"SHUT UP OR I'LL SICK SMILEDOG ON YOU, HUMAN."

Dib turned so he was on his back and tried not to chuckle. "I'm surprised you understood that reference."

"GO. THE FUCK. TO SLEEP."

"Of course, my Almighty Zim," Dib said, smirking as he lifted Zim's pillow off of him. The alien grabbed onto it, looking aggravated and playful at the same time as he tried to pull it down, then Dib stroked one of his long antennas.

Instantly, the alien let go and went limp on the bed as soon as Dib touched the very tip of it. "Ohhh, you sly little primate…"

"Got ya, Zim," Dib said as he continued to run his fingers alongside the black stalk. The alien let out a quiet moaning sound, his entire body seeming to change. He looked completely and utterly relaxed after just a few seconds, his previous aggression gone now. He began to purr deep in the back of his throat, though it was hardly audible, like he was trying to fight against it.

"I hate you sometimes, human," Zim said. He didn't want Dib to stop but didn't want to admit how damn good it felt to him.

Dib kissed the tip of his antenna and the alien immediately felt like he had melted into the bed. It was so pleasurable, he just wanted it to keep going. He vaguely wondered in the back of his mind if this was what being "turned on" felt like for humans, if this sensation he was having was the equivalent of what sexual pleasure was for his species. But, at the same time, he wouldn't know. He was a virgin. That type of pleasure was supposed to be far more intense; his antennae were just sensitive, similar to how human hands are sensitive. You stroke one and it renders an Irken calm. You yank on it and it causes intense pain. You cut it off...he didn't want to imagine the pain that would come of such an action. He recalled once learning than an ancient punishment for Irkens was having their antenna cut or burned off, therefore causing the victim both excruciating pain and deafness. He threw the thought from his mind, not wanting to think of it.

Up until Dib came along, reproduction was never on his mind, but with this human's presence, it was popping up more often in his thoughts. There were things about his own body that he didn't know, never mind the human body, so he wouldn't know, not until they get comfortable enough with each other to actually have sex. And, seeing as to how this relationship was going, he felt like it was inevitably going to happen at some point. He just hoped it didn't hurt, hoped that nothing bad would happen from it. Part of him wanted to, but another part of him was scared, nervous. Regardless, he decided to enjoy the immense pleasure he was feeling from his antennae and figured that ignoring all unrelated thoughts was the best thing to do for the moment.

Dib saw the tranquil look on his face and just smiled warmly. "Love you too, honey."


	20. Father

Today was the five-month anniversary of Dib being completely seizure free. He had gained back a very significant portion of his mobility, though he still had to walk with a cane and had an extremely noticeable limp. His blind eye had lost most of its color and the pupil and iris were a murky gray rather than that beautiful amber that his other one was. It looked creepy, but this was Dib, the kid who painted his nails black and wore eyeliner. He was more attractive than any of the jocks at school, and Zim loved him for it.

On another note, it was the very end of February, and it was freezing outside. Zim looked miserable all huddled up in his long winter coat with his bag slung over his back, boots drenched with frigid water from the slush. The wind bit his face when it blew and he had to squint his eyes to protect them from the sheer cold. Icicles hung from the roofs like dangerous knives just waiting for an unfortunate victim to walk underneath.

He hated winter. It was never this cold back on Irk. He recognized that Earth was a planet of water; oceans, lakes, streams, rivers, rain, hail, sleet, snow, ice, everything. While in the summer, the water gets soaked into the ground, during winter, it just solidifies and piles up into huge mountains, blanketing the entire despondent city in its frigid whiteness. And Zim hated it. It was too cold and he still had his weight issues, which made him even more susceptible to the environment when the weather decided to plummet like a penguin into water.

He moved quickly to get back into the Membrane house, immediately sighing once the warmth encompassed him. He took his coat off and set his backpack full of groceries down onto the ground. He crouched near the heater on the floor, rubbing his arms as he shivered and rocked back and forth. "I hate this planet, I hate this planet, I hate this planet…" he muttered.

He looked up when he heard someone coming down the stairs. It was Gaz, and the first thing he noticed about her was that she was…smiling? What could possibly cause that insufferable girl to smile? Was she happy to see him? Yeah, she caused him a lot of problems and stress and didn't exactly have a good temperament with him all the time, but she had grown close to him over the last five months. She was surly by nature, but had been less so with him ever since the whole "menstruation incident." He had gained a new understanding of how she worked in general, and she had even given him a few half-grins in the past when he praised her for something, as well as scowls and fits whenever he scolded her. But in general, Zim could tell that she liked him. So for her to have a bright smile on her face meant that there must have been something fantastic that happened.

Zim eyed a paper that she was holding in her hand and stood up, his scrawny body still shaking. His feet and fingers were numb and his antennas were trembling underneath his black wig.

"Zim, look at my report card," she said, hastily shoving the piece of paper into his stomach.

The alien grabbed it with his gloved hands and looked it over. There was a B, B, B-, C-, and, "A C plus in math? Gaz, you got a _C plus_ in math?"

Gaz was beaming. God, that smile looked like it had no place on her mouth, but it seemed so fitting for her to be happy for once. "I didn't fail!" she said excitedly. "I thought I was going to, but I didn't!"

An enormous smile spread across Zim's face. "Gaz, this is perfect!" he said, looking over the paper again. "Damn, I guess those cram sessions can actually work sometimes." He raised a hand and ruffled her hair playfully. "I'm proud of you Gaz, really."

Gaz swatted his hand away, but she was still smiling like the little girl she was supposed to be. She wasn't supposed to be depressed and isolated. She was supposed to be happy, laughing. "You're actually proud of me?" she asked.

"Course I am," Zim said as he walked over to the refrigerator, grabbed a stray magnet from the corner, and stuck the paper up there. "Awesome work Gaz, really, I mean it." He wrapped an arm around her and half-hugged her in a friendly way, eyeing the bag he left on the ground. Right before he released her to grab it, she threw her arms around his stomach and embraced him tightly.

Zim's back when ramrod straight and he lifted his arms a little, unsure of what she was doing at first. It took a few seconds for his brain to register that she wasn't hurting him. She was hugging him, showing him a common and familiar gesture of human affection that she never did to anybody. Ever.

He lowered his arms and figured it'd be best to return the gesture. Having never seen her so happy before, he didn't quite know what to say to her. It was so out of character, though her behavior had been slowly changing ever since he moved in with them. She talked a little more to them and didn't totally quarantine herself in a corner like how she used to. She seemed happier, like an empty section of her life was finally being filled.

"Thanks Dad," Gaz said, then she turned around and ran back up the stairs to her bedroom.

Zim just stood there dumbfounded. Did she just call him Dad? As in father? No, he wasn't her father. He was a friend, and the whole reason the friendship started in the first place was from her brother having a brain tumor. He just shook his head and grabbed the bag from the ground. She had to have said Zim, not Dad. He didn't want her calling him Dad. He wasn't a father and he never wanted to be one.

He started to put their groceries away. He truly was proud that she hadn't failed any of her classes, but he had never expected Gaz to hug him out of all things. Was he really having that much of an impact on her life? He had never had a family before. Maybe she considered him family now, same way how Dib considered him part of the Membrane household for being his boyfriend. Even if they weren't in a romantic relationship and were just at friend status, Dib said that he'd still call him part of the family. There was one thing Dib had said roughly a month ago that stuck with him, and that was: "Family doesn't stop at blood."

These humans and there confusing social behaviors. Irkens had no family. Nobody had a mother, or a father, or sisters, or brothers, and no one really even had friends either. You were an individual meant to fend for yourself and fulfill your duties and tasks for the good of the Empire. If you died, then at least you tried.

The Empire didn't want weaklings. Love and family was seen as rendering one weak and inferior. Romance was banned, lovemaking was criminalized, hell, even kissing and hugging was frowned upon. But here on Earth, these humans did it all the time, and Zim couldn't understand why it was such a taboo back on his home planet. Most of the music he had heard on Earth had lyrics about love. Romance movies were hugely popular, and virtually every video game and book had at least a minor love interest somewhere in the plot. People tattooed the names of their loved ones onto their body. People painted pictures of hearts, drew images of others kissing, rallied for gay rights, and hell, there was even a day designated specifically for love; Valentine's Day.

He absolutely loved kissing Dib and holding him close. He loved running his hands along his body without his gloves on, feeling and tasting his smooth skin and black hair. He loved how Dib cuddled him in his sleep when it was cold, the two of them sharing their own body heat underneath the blankets to keep warm. On Irk, if you were ever discovered to be doing such things, you'd be shunned and most likely imprisoned. If you got pregnant, you were executed. Murdered for falling in love and making a new life form.

Zim closed the refrigerator door and leaned against it. He just needed to think. What would his leaders think of him if they discovered he had a relationship with a human? No, they weren't important. They had banished him here. They abandoned him in the hopes that he'd die. He had mostly forgotten about them, but the thought still nagged him. What would they think? What would they think of him kissing a human, holding hands with one, sleeping with one, loving one? He and Dib were even getting pretty close to the point of having intercourse. Zim knew it was going to happen at some point, and he felt like it was going to happen soon. Hell, they had been so close just a couple weeks ago during Valentine's Day after a very intimate and romantic moment they shared. They had both been so ready, but then Gaz walked in on them right before they were about to undress each other with a question about her homework. Zim felt like he would have died had she walked in just five minutes later and caught them "doing the act," but thankfully, she got them right before that took place.

He and Dib were comfortable enough with each other, trusted each other, and felt relaxed enough that sex was, ultimately, inevitable. It was bound to happen any day, especially with Dib's increased movement, but he just didn't know when. Above that, his own body had been urging him to do so with the human, which was something he had never felt before. Lust was a strange and foreign sensation to him, more so than it was to Dib since Irkens were trained to overcome such feelings and shun them. He assumed it'd be maybe a week until their hormones got the better of them.

So what would his leaders think? He was doing every single one of the most taboo social behaviors that an Irken could ever do, and it wasn't even with a member of his own species.

They'd probably just laugh and cut out their transmission from him.

Zim let out his breath. What now? He had homework, but he didn't want to do it. The classes were too easy, and he rivalled Dib with his grades. Once Zim realized that he could put himself in a higher position above the other students by getting better grades than the rest of them, he actually started trying in his classes. He always stayed one step behind Dib, not wanting to anger him by rising past him. Dib was, after all, fourth in his class with an outstanding GPA. Zim wanted him to keep that title. He could settle for number five.

Zim walked up the stairs and scrunched his face a little when he smelled something strange. He peeked into the bathroom and saw Dib with his trench coat on, leaning back against the toilet while blowing on his fingers. He flashed him a smirk and gave a quick wink.

"You know how bad that nail polish smells, right?" Zim said.

"Hey, it's better than a dead corpse," Dib said.

"Black again, hm?"

"With turquoise on the nails of the ring fingers," Dib said. "Got a problem with it, sweetheart?"

"Not at all," Zim said. "You're gorgeous with eyeliner and your nails painted."

Dib smirked at him. "Knew you loved it."

"Oh shut up," Zim said as he walked over to him. He cupped Dib's face in his hands and leaned down, pressing his lips against his lovingly. He held him close as he kissed him, enjoying how he tasted like that intensely strong, slightly minty and alcoholic mouthwash. Yes, this was Dib; constantly clean, inside and out, with a face that was constantly soft because he shaved virtually every day. Hell, the kid even shaved everything on him besides his head and his arms. Zim loved it.

The alien broke the kiss and said, "So I think Gaz and I are getting along pretty well."

"Considering she hasn't punched you, I'd say so too," Dib said, running a hand down along Zim's forearm. "I've lived with her ever since she was born, and I'm telling you, she's actually happy when you're around."

"I don't know whether to be concerned or overjoyed."

"Be happy," Dib said, smiling. It was a still a little lopsided to the right. "I know how she acts when she's actually happy with something, and she was pretty content earlier. I saw her smile once when you walked into the room."

"Do you think she's…looking up to me, or something?" Zim asked.

Dib shrugged. "It wouldn't surprise me," he said. "I think she's lonely a lot, so for somebody to be willing to go out at two in the morning to help her with her first period and assure her that isn't dying would be pretty big for her."

Zim closed his eyes at the memory. "Do you even understand how awkward that night was for me, human? How uncomfortable?"

"No, but I can imagine," he said, blowing on his nails again. "Hey, it isn't something to be embarrassed about or anything. You handled it pretty well."

"Would you have done the same for her?"

Dib thought for a second and hesitated, then he said, "Probably not. Not at two in the morning, anyways."

"Hm…I should probably do my homework," Zim said as he started to walk away. "I really don't want to do those damn calculus papers…"

* * *

"Alright you little worm baby, it's time for bed," Zim said as he grabbed onto Gaz's arm and pulled her up onto her feet from the couch.

"Just one more hour? Or two?" Gaz asked him.

"It's eleven at night, so no," Zim said, bringing her up the stairs. If Gaz had hated him like how she did when they first met, he knew that he'd be on the ground with a black eye right now. Either that or he'd be dragging her up the stairs. Instead, she just went along with him, not caring that he was holding onto her arm.

"But it's a Friday night," Gaz said. "Please? Just one more game?"

"No," Zim said simply, bringing her into her room. The stuffed animals scattered around the room still freaked him out to no extent, but he didn't show it. "It's funny how you're tired during the day but you perk up as soon as the sun goes down."

"I'm a night owl," Gaz said as she sat down on her bed. Despite how dark the child dressed, she looked adorable in her little black nightgown with designs of purple skulls scattered around it.

"Well then it's time for the little bird to go to bed," Zim said. He handed her a stuffed animal that was of a purple teddy bear, knowing by heart which ones were her favorite and which ones sat forgotten in a corner. She grabbed the bear and hugged it to her chest, laying down against her pillow.

Zim pulled the black and purple blankets up over her, tucking her into bed. "You want the night light on?"

"I'm good," Gaz said into the teddy bear, muffling her voice a little. She then lifted her head and asked, "Can I have a kiss goodnight?"

Zim hesitated for a second, then he let out a breath and smiled. Why not? She had been deprived of both parents. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. "Night, honey bunny."

"Night Zim," Gaz said.

Zim left the door cracked open just a little bit so that a small amount of light still filtered into her room, then he walked into Dib's room. "The little sibling's all set," he said.

"You mean the sibling who's finally developing a soul?" Dib said in a half-joking way. He was reclined comfortably on his bed, his hands behind his head as he watched him. He looked Zim over, loving everything about how he looked. He loved how he kept his shoulder exposed when he wore that old shirt of his that Dib had forgotten about and was now designated as a pajama top. He loved that black, feminine-looking underwear that exposed his thin, green legs. He loved the ruby red eyes and the black antenna, the thin body, the three-fingered hands, everything.

Zim raised an antenna at him. "Something caught your eye, human?"

"Yeah," Dib said, smirking. "You."

Zim smiled and walked over to him, laying down by his side. "You know I love you and all your emo-ness," he said, curling up against his human.

"I'm not an emo," Dib said. "I think I'd hate the world if I were."

"Still amazing that after everything people have done to you, you still don't hate everyone," Zim said.

"Hate's unnecessary," he said. "It's easy to despise humanity, but it's better to do what's right."

Zim closed his eyes and sighed. "You and your morals."

* * *

**Alrighty! So I need to warn to guys that the next chapter it a sex scene. Yes, the whole thing. I just thought I'd give you a heads up so you aren't surprised.**

**BUUUUUT for those of you who read it, please leave a comment or private message me about how you thought I wrote it. I'm debating if I want to write an actual sex scene in a novel that I'm working on, but I don't know how well it would fit. I don't even know if I CAN write one. So share with me your thoughts :3 If it's horrible and atrocious, let me know. If you thought it was beautiful and heartfelt, I'd also like to know. MERCI BEAUCOUP MES AMIS**


	21. A Very Intimate Moment

**THIS CHAPTER IS RATED M.**

**THIS CHAPTER IS RATED M.**

**THIS CHAPTER IS RATED M.**

**IT'S A SEX SCENE.**

**THIS CHAPTER IS RATED M.**

**SKIP IT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ IT, YOU WON'T MISS ANY IMPORTANT PLOT DEVELOPMENTS OR ANYTHING.**

**RATED M FOR MATURE.**

**NOT THAT I COULD BE MATURE WHILE WRITING THIS BUT WHATEVER.**

**YOU'VE BEEN FOREWARNED.**

**But, if you do happen to read this chapter, like how I said in the last author's note, please leave me a comment or PM telling how good or terrible of a job I did since I have no experience in this area of life/have never before written an actual, legitimate sex scene. So I'd like to know how this turned out. Is it realistic or it total fantasy? TELL ME. I COMMAND YOU. I would mainly like to know because I'm debating if whether or not I want to put one in a novel I'm writing (one of seven that I'm doing…WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF.)**

* * *

This human was so warm to the alien as he cuddled against him. The room was freezing, but here in this bed, wrapped up in the blankets like caterpillars in cocoons, they were warm and comfortable.

Dib raised a hand and took his glasses off, setting them on the bedside table. He glanced at Zim and noticed how much of a curvy feline he looked like with the position he was in and with his head raised. He said, "You look like a cat sometimes. You're beautiful."

Zim smiled. If he were a dog, his tail would be wagging like the propeller of a boat. He raised his own lanky hand and ran it down the length of Dib's chest. "The Zim is honored you think so," he said. He glanced at the door for a second to make sure that it was closed, and to his relief, it was. He leaned forward a little bit and kissed Dib on the lips, loving how he pushed him back with a good smooch.

They did this for a while, exploring each other's mouths with their tongues. Dib slowly slid his hands up underneath Zim's shirt, feeling the ribs in his chest and the warmth of his skin. He gently pushed Zim onto his back and normally would have stayed by his side, but instead, he moved so that he was straddling Zim above the waist. He pushed him down into the bed, practically pinning him there as their kisses became much more passionate and powerful.

Dib felt his heartbeat quicken in his chest and heard it thundering in his ears as his breathing picked up in pace a little. Zim moved so that their hips brushed up against each other and that pretty much did it for Dib. All at once, he felt his blood rush down to between his legs and could feel a strange sensation that was a mix of excitement and nervousness. He felt lust, suddenly wanting nothing more than to spread his boyfriend's legs apart and fuck him like there was no end. He wanted to hold him close, wanted to get inside of him, wanted to have sex with him.

He broke the kiss for a moment so that he could breathe. His hormones were going crazy with how he was sitting over Zim, their groins touching and their bodies incredibly close. His fingers felt around Zim's curvaceous sides, his brain telling the rest of his body that in the next few minutes, he was going to have his first experience with mating.

Zim gave him a smug look. "Why'd you stop?" he asked, placing his hands on Dib's hips. This was going to torment him if he didn't do something right then at that moment.

"Because I don't know if you're thinking the same thing I am," Dib said, still holding himself over Zim with his arms. He looked absolutely gorgeous with that black hair falling around his face, his eyes dark and eerie and lips a soft pink.

Zim leaned forward and kissed Dib along his jaw, then he kissed his neck several times, enjoying that fresh, clean scent he always had. He didn't exactly like being on the bottom since he had no intention of being the submissive one, but he had also been pretty rough with Dib as far as the physical therapy went. He probably owed it to him.

"I'm pretty sure we're thinking the same thing," Zim said, kissing the other's neck again, then he moved back up to his jaw and ultimately to his lips. He started to feel very warm in the lower end of his body and even started to get a very slight, pleasurable, tickling sensation. He wasn't sure what it was, but he liked it, and just assumed that it was his body preparing him for what they were about to do. "And you better not make me wait any longer, Dib-human. I can't take it."

The grin that showed up on Dib's face was sexier than all the ones beforehand combined. This human was incredibly attractive, and right before Zim knew, he was fervently kissing him again, pushing him down further and further into the soft mattress of the bed as he undressed him. Dib moaned and it vibrated Zim's lips, which made him only arch his back a little. It tickled and he laughed a little as a reminder that this wasn't going to be stressful; it was going to be fun, enjoyable. It was meant to be loving.

Dib felt the other's hands fiddle with the edge of his pants. The button was suddenly undone and the zipper was pulled down just a second later. Damn, this erection that had formed was strong and raging. Yes, his body wanted it. He wanted to have sex. He took off the rest of Zim's clothes and vice versa, leaving them completely, totally naked with each other.

Dib knew that Zim's anatomy was going to be different from his own, especially since he was a hermaphrodite and had the ability to both give and take DNA, but it was remarkable how similar it was to a female's. There must have been a phallus, but it wasn't visible, at least not from the outside.

Zim's grasp on Dib's waist tightened considerably when he penetrated him. He spread his legs apart wide, feeling as the human suddenly started to move back and forth, his hips thrusting into him rhythmically and gently, like he was afraid of hurting him.

Zim set his head back against the pillow as Dib rocked his body against the bed. He bit his lip and let go of Dib, putting his arms out by his sides as his fingers clenched the blanket. The pleasure from it was even better than the one he got from his antennas being stroked, but at the same time, there was a sense of pain. It wasn't intense, but rather was dull, but it fought against his body yearning for Dib. The friction as they moved in and out of each other was hot, almost burning, and he couldn't figure out if he loved it or not. It felt good but hurt at the same time.

For Dib, he had never felt this way. His blood was rushing as his heart pounded against his ribcage, hardly believing that he was actually banging his hips with somebody. All what he could feel was the intense warmth and wetness between his legs, the pressure and sensation on his reproductive organ blinding him with desire as his body got itself ready to climax. He hardly knew what he was doing, but it felt right, like he was hitting every spot perfectly.

His voice wanted to moan loudly as he humped and thrust his hips in and out, but he couldn't afford to wake up Gaz. He just needed his moment of him having sex for the first time to last. He kept grinding his hips into Zim, feeling his body tightening as a light feeling formed between his legs. He moved back a little, getting closer and closer until—

He curved his back as all of his muscles tightened. He couldn't help but let out a moan, trying to be as quiet as possible as his muscles suddenly released and contracted, finally reaching orgasm. He was deep and far inside Zim, his body shaking as he stopped rocking against him. All he was aware of was the immense pleasure of his body mating, releasing his semen into the other, his whole body working to transfer it into the other person.

For Zim, it just felt like something else altogether. For somebody to treasure his body as much as Dib did was almost sacred. Nobody had ever done this with him and nobody had ever wanted to. He was wanted, loved, and cherished, and he adored it.

And then, just like that, it was over. Dib felt like he was floating. He opened his eyes and looked down at Zim, breathing heavily as he tried to catch his breath, legs feelings like jelly. That was awesome.

He was surprised when Zim suddenly pushed him over in an almost violent fashion, pinning him down to the bed as he got on top of him. "My turn," he said, smirking as his segmented tongue licked his lips hungrily. While he had liked what Dib did, it still hurt. He just never showed it to him.

Dib was still recovering from his own pleasure when Zim started to move on him. Yes, this felt better for him. Before it didn't feel as good, but now that he was the one in control, he was going to use Dib for his own pleasure. He sort of had a premonition that he would enjoy Dib being the submissive one, for part of him wanted to totally dominate him. He might as well take that opportunity for the moment.

Dib just closed his eyes, allowing Zim to do whatever it was he wanted with him. He didn't care, he was just enjoying this whole thing; the sensation between his legs, the warmth his whole body was experiencing, and the feeling of total relaxation and utter happiness. He didn't want this bliss to end, not even as Zim topped the shit out of him. The way how their bodies moved in unison together, bashing their hips together and gripping each other to nearly bruising extents, moaning and kissing each other, mounting one another—it felt like it was too much, but no, this was real. It was actually happening. Dib was getting laid, Zim was having sexual intercourse.

It lasted a little longer for Zim until he finally got to the point of orgasm. When he did, he laid down on top of Dib, his fingers gripping him so tightly that his claws almost cut through his skin. He let out a strange hissing noise—one that was purely Irken—from the very back of his throat as his body tightened and relaxed rapidly. It also lasted longer for him, which kept him moving against Dib, and when his body finally calmed down, he just laid there on top of him.

Zim's chest rapidly expanded and contracted and he swallowed, breathing quickly. He raised his head and looked at his boyfriend. He smiled and chortled for no apparent reason, giggling like he was the happiest creature in the universe. He kissed Dib on the lips.

Dib embraced him tightly, almost crushing his small body with the hug. He kissed him in return, then Zim moved off from over him, body trembling as he laid down beside his human with a tired huff.

"I…I think that this was the best night I've ever had," Dib said between breaths, feeling Zim wrap an arm around him. He snuggled him lovingly, planting small, sweet kisses on the human.

"I'm going to do that again with you some day," Zim said as he closed his eyes. He felt a wave of weariness overcome him, suddenly becoming drowsy. He was sleepy.

"Please do," Dib said, holding Zim close. "I love you, Zim…I really do…"

"Same here, you revolting little worm," Zim said. He chuckled. "I love you."


	22. Snow

**Thanks for all the insight and advice about the last chapter, guys :) Really, I appreciate everything you guys said and all the advice you sent me. I find it very useful to experiment on fanfiction before putting something questionable into a novel, so thanks!**

**Also I disappeared for a while because I've been working a lot lately O_O FIFTY PLUS HOURS A WEEK, BABY**

* * *

That next morning, Dib woke up and felt that he was sore in areas he had never been sore in before, mainly in his abdomen. He still felt light and utterly happy, pleasure still in his legs from losing his virginity. What a night.

He pushed himself upright with his arm and flicked some of his hair out of his eyes. He looked down at Zim's bare body and saw that he was still sleeping soundly on his side, curled up slightly with his arms somewhat pulled into his chest. Dib just smiled warmly, loving how cute he was.

He put his feet against the cold floor and stood, collecting their clothes that they had discarded onto the ground in their haste. He piled them up and limped over to his closet, getting dressed with his back to Zim. He flexed the fingers of his right hand sluggishly, still trying to get them to work properly after all these months. He grabbed his cane from the corner of the room and leaned his weight onto it, then he glanced back at Zim and saw him looking straight back at him.

"So I never thought that a human would make me stop being a virgin," Zim said, those deep crimson eyes still looking at him. They were beautiful and gem-like, always reflective and shiny like a few of the studs in Dib's ears. He pushed himself up onto his feet, shivering a little from the chill in the air.

"Well you looked like you were enjoying yourself," Dib said. "…Right?"

"Oh believe me Dib, I was," Zim said as he stood up and started to dress himself. By the way he was moving, it was obvious that he was also sore in certain areas of his body. "So what's for breakfast?"

Dib shrugged. "Whatever we've got, I guess. Maybe waffles."

"Now that's something I can eat," Zim said as he headed out of the room.

Dib watched him, noticing the slightly awkward gait he had. "Zim, if I hurt you last night, I'd really prefer it if you told me. It looks like something's wrong."

He looked back at him and said, "Dib-worm, nothing is wrong. I promise you." He walked over to his boyfriend and set his arms down against his shoulders, loosely wrapping them around his neck in a hug. "The simple thing is that you're a lot bigger than I am, so I'm just sore. I promise you, it didn't hurt."

Dib hesitated and Zim could tell by the look in his eyes that he wasn't buying it. "You don't have to lie to me, Zim."

He just wanted him to shut up. He greatly appreciated the concern, but he didn't want to hear it, so he kissed him to get him to close his mouth. He pulled away and said, "I'm going to wake the younger sibling."

Before Dib could say anything, he turned around and walked into Gaz's room. He didn't know why he didn't want to admit to Dib that yes, he had in fact hurt him. But, at the same time, he had experienced one of the best physical sensations he ever had, and not only had he loved it, but he wanted to do it again. He just couldn't confess that he had felt pain, and he didn't understand why, but it wasn't something he was going to talk about.

Gaz groaned when the light hit her and she turned over in her bed.

"Hey honey bunny," Zim said, smiling a little at her. "Time to get up."

"It's only ten…" she moaned. "I wanna stay in bed."

"Well I want you to help your brother and I make breakfast," Zim said. "It won't be that bad."

"I'd rather get stung by a killer bee."

"No you wouldn't," Zim said, sneakily walking over to her. She had her back turned, which made her perfect prey; he grabbed onto her ankle and started to pull her off of the bed.

Gaz kicked her leg and squealed, though it was one of delight. She grabbed onto her mattress and tried to pull herself away from him, both laughing and smiling at the same time. "Let me go!" she demanded, clinging to the bed for dear life.

"Well if you're not gonna help us make breakfast then I guess that means I gotta tickle you," Zim said as he tickled the bottom of her foot with his three fingers. She squirmed and chucked the pillow at his head and he flinched, then she yanked her foot forward and he fell down against the bed with her.

Gaz looked like she absolutely loved the attention as Zim decided to tickle her sides. She giggled and tried to push him away in futile attempts, thrashing around until he grabbed onto her and picked her up over his shoulder.

"Now that's a good bunny," Zim said, feeling Gaz strike his back with a fist as he stood, but it wasn't forceful. She was just showing that she liked this playing around.

"I hate you sometimes, Zim," Gaz said, hanging over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes as he walked out of the room and down the stairs.

"Love you too."

Once he reached the bottom of the stairs, he set Gaz down on her feet and she ran off into the kitchen. Dib was already there, doing virtually everything with his left hand as he grabbed the sack of flour, sugar, a bowl, and all the ingredients needed for waffles. He was incredibly ambidextrous at this point.

Zim wrapped his arms around him from behind and set his head against his back, smiling. "Looks like you beat me to the kitchen."

Dib glanced behind him and smirked. "Guess so."

"Can I help?" Gaz asked.

"Duh, that's why I brought you down here in the first place," Zim said as he let go of Dib and ruffled Gaz's bird nest-like hair. He noticed that the look she gave him was similar to that of a puppy being chosen to have a family. She admired him somehow, looked up to him even though he had once been a malevolent and careless creature, and it was obvious that she felt close to him. Zim wasn't going to deny her the satisfaction of having a replacement father, even if he himself didn't want to be a parent, but the girl deserved one. Saying no would devastate her. Besides, she actually had a sweet side to her behind all the scowling and the "I-hate-the-world" attitude. She loved him.

It was a little daunting to think that he was beginning to substitute her practically non-existent father for her, but he didn't have much control over it anyways. If she was going to look up to him as a parent, then he might as well let her do so, and he might as well give her a little piece of his heart while he was at it, too. He loved her brother and they were family now.

Family…what a strange word to be said upon an Irken tongue. Irkens had no family. Irkens had no one. But, Zim was an exception to that. He had two people in his life; a lover and an unrelated sister who was probably going to become his unofficially adopted daughter at some point in the future, probably within the next year. He praised her when she deserved it, scolded her when she screwed up, helped her when she was in need, and gave her a portion of the love and attention she deserved in the forms of witty remarks and short bursts of playtime like the one they had shared that morning. But other times he could feel them growing closer, like when he gave her kisses goodnight and helped wean her off from needing a nightlight to sleep. After all, she was only twelve. In four years, she'd be sixteen, learning how to drive and discovering the deeper portions of human emotions. She wasn't going to be like this for much longer, and when she's an adult, he won't be able to have those moments with her anymore.

Something dropped in him when he made the realization that she wasn't going to be twelve forever. The times when he wakes her up in the morning by tickling her and dragging her up the stairs to go to bed were going to stop soon, and he had only just started doing that. At some point real soon, she was going to get too old to give a kiss goodnight. Zim looked at Gaz and tried to imagine her being sixteen, imagining that she'd grow as tall as Dib and become mature. By the time Dib graduates college, she'd be finishing high school, and she was only in sixth grade now.

The thought crossed his mind that maybe he should become a parent in the future. If he had a baby, he'd be able to have more moments like that for a considerably longer period of time. Gaz was going to be a woman within the next few years, but if he had his own child, he'd be able to enjoy it for longer. On top of that, having a child in his eyes would be like literally creating a lifelong friend. Dib would make one hell of a parent, for Zim knew that that human would be everything for his child that his father wasn't for him.

He shoved the thought out of his mind. How vile! Zim, a parent? He'd have to adopt one of these parentless humans—what were they called? Orphans? –and then raise it. He didn't want that responsibility, and he sure as hell didn't want to give birth either, not that he would have to worry about that…as far as he knew. He couldn't believe that he thought about being a parent when he could hardly handle being on a city bus with a baby in the vicinity. They were smelly little creatures, always drooling, always eating, always needing something, always making bizarre little baby noises. Always _weak_.

"Zim?" Dib asked, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Are you alright?"

"Hm? Yeah, I'm fine," Zim said as he grabbed the soy milk from the refrigerator. Dib would never drink milk from a cow, and since it was from soy beans, Zim found that he too could also drink it without feeling as if his body was eating itself from the inside out/imploding painfully.

"You're acting a little funny today," Dib said.

Zim looked at the sink for a second, then he turned around and started to walk away. "I'm going for a walk," he said as he grabbed his coat in the foyer.

"What? Zim, it's only ten degrees outside," Dib said.

"I just need to be alone for a moment," he said. "I'll be back soon. Don't follow me, okay?" He stepped out the front door and closed his behind him, heading down the freezing city street.

Dib just stood there for a second in the kitchen, staring at the door. Gaz looked up at him and asked, "Did you do something to piss him off?"

"I don't think so…" Dib said.

Gaz just stared at him. "Are you really not considering that maybe it's because you two had sex last night?"

Dib nearly choked and looked at her in surprise, eyes wide. "Gaz!"

"What? You thought I couldn't hear you?" she said, raising a brow. "I give you credit for having the decency to try to be quiet, but you failed."

Dib felt his face grow hot as he started blushing. "You weren't supposed to hear any of that."

"It's alright, I nearly screamed and then shoved my headphones into my ears," she said. "I blasted the music, then I realized that I don't really care what you two do with each other. You know what Zim's like. Whenever he's legitimately upset about something, he never says it."

Face still red, he asked, "So…are you thinking I should go after him?"

"Probably," Gaz said as she grabbed a soda from the refrigerator. "He wouldn't hurt himself, but sometimes you just really gotta annoy someone to get them to tell you what's bothering them."

Dib sighed, still looking embarrassed, then he grabbed his trench coat. "Be good, okay?"

* * *

Oh the cold…the cold! How frigid the wind was as it sank its terrible teeth into his face. He missed the warmth of Irk and the planets that they had conquered and successfully terraformed. He pulled his coat up a little higher on his face, his breath very visible every time he exhaled.

He turned a corner on the street and continued down in a random direction. He was changing too quickly for his mind to keep up with it. When he first got here, he was egotistical, full of himself, selfish, careless, and wanted to take over this dirtball. He wasn't a fan of Earth but he liked it a little more than he originally did when he first arrived. But now he had just discovered feelings and ideas he never imagined even existed. This feeling of love and caring for something, the desire to give up everything for another, that brief moment of yearning for a child—it wasn't him. Zim was a dominating person who was intensely loyal to his people and wanted to make his Tallest proud.

No, the Tallest abandoned him. He was exiled, unwanted by the entirety of his own species. They weren't worth his greatness or his intelligence. He was Zim! He was strong, he needed no one.

No, that's not true either. He _does_ need someone. He needs Dib. He was the only one who actually cared about him enough to put his foot down and declare that he'd be the sole savior of Earth and stop him.

This was too confusing. Everything was clashing for him. He could be the only Irken with a loving mate. He could be the only Irken who was a parent. He missed his old home, but he felt as if he belonged on Earth, disguised as a human. But he hated these humans. Everything he ever thought or believed was very quickly falling apart. All ideals that had been pounded into his head from his young age as a smeet seemed to be false now, not applicable to all life forms. He always thought that a militarized society that shunned affection made a race strong and successful, but he found out that it only makes one weak and insecure. A society based on love seemed to be much stronger internally.

He turned around a corner and stopped. He raised a foot and kicked a snow bank to keep get some of his frustration out, then he turned around and saw Dib standing there, his dark attire seriously contrasting with the whiteness of the snow. "…What are you doing?" he asked quietly.

"I told you not to follow me," Zim said as he started to walk away again briskly, only to have Dib trot up behind him.

"Well why not? You seem upset," Dib said.

"That's why I _want_ to be alone, Dib," Zim replied, his tone dark. "I'm just confused, okay? I'm way too…too freaking confused, Dib-thing."

"About what?"

"I can't explain it, so just turn around, go home back to Gaz, and let me think for a while. That's all I want to do right now."

Dib thought about that for a moment, then he bent down and picked up a pile of snow from the ground. He packed it together into a sphere, then he smirked and threw it at Zim's back.

The alien went ridged when the ball of snow exploded against his spine, then he whipped his head around, giving Dib a death glare. "How…DARE you, filthy Earth worm!" He also grabbed a pile of snow and chucked it at Dib, almost immediately forgetting his upset demeanor from just mere seconds ago.

The human only laughed and dodged it, then he made another snowball and threw it at Zim, landing a good hit right into the alien's left shoulder.

Zim gave him a furious look. Good – that was the intention. He didn't want Zim to mope around; he wanted him to be his usual self, without the angst, and he wanted him to relieve whatever frustration he had gained. He started to pelt Dib with snowballs, chasing him down the street while throwing his typical strange insults at him. Dib felt one connect to the back of his head when he ducked too late, now running down the street with the other in tow.

"GET BACK HERE FILTHY PIG-WORM!" Zim yelled, throwing more snow at Dib and successfully hitting him. "NOBODY MESSES WITH THE ZIM WITH…WHITE SKY FLUFFIES!"

Dib laughed. It slowed him down and suddenly Zim plowed straight into him, knocking him into a snowbank. Dib flipped himself over and grabbed onto Zim's sides. "You are so cute when you're mad," he said.

"Silence, earth-monkey!" Zim said, the look on his face being close to the verge of maniacal. He was smiling though, full of action and emotion. He swiped a handful of snow over Dib's face, but he brushed it off like it was nothing with a brisk shake of the head.

"Adorable little space-boy," Dib said, leaning upwards and planting a kiss on Zim's soft lips.

Zim relaxed at that, still on his knees over Dib. He leaned down a little more until they broke apart. "You humans and your ways of making people feel better…"

Dib just smirked. "It's called snow, by the way, honey."


End file.
